Who Moved Alexandra?

Are we still the heart of Central Otago ...? ... (600 words)

In my last posting, the temperature analysis for Alexandra omitted readings from Alexandra Airport, which is about 80 m higher than the town. As a result of that height difference, temperatures there tend to be lower than for the other Alexandra sites.

I wonder if that’s why it’s been less common - since June 2013 when the Airport site was established - for Alexandra to be featured as having the record national highs that were so common in the years before? Most of the weather stations in Alexandra are maintained by NIWA. The airport site is the only only one maintained by its competitor, MetService (NZMS), who hold the contract to supply provide weather information to TVNZ.

But the lower values in recent years may also be because Alexandra appears to have moved from Central Otago to Southland. On the TV1 weather forecasts, it’s positioned closer to Gore (46.1 S). In real life its latitude (45.23 S), about 65 km to the north of Dunedin (45.87 S) and just 20 km south of Queenstown (45.03 S). It should be located on the line between the two sites, not nearly 100 km further south!

June 14 was our coldest day so far this winter. The presenter told viewers that people in Alexandra had woken up to a a temperature of -9 C.

There are 12 official Met Stations within 10 km of Alexandra. Listed below are the 9:00 am readings for 14 June for the 4 sites with available data 24 hours later on NIWA climate database (CliFlo).

Station Date Tmax Tmin Provider Location Altitude (m)
36592 2020-06-14 6.5 -7.3 NIWA Pioneer Park 140
39564 2020-06-14 6.6 -9.9 NIWA Clyde 170
41163 2020-06-14 5.0 -9.0 NZMS Airport 230
43904 2020-06-14 6.5 -8.2 NIWA Orchard Drive 132

It was a beautiful sunny day. Quite pleasant for my game of tennis at Clyde, even though the Alexandra’s maximum temperature reached only 7C, as shown in the screen shot below (or perhaps a bit lower at the Airport). Oddly, it seems that this day the TV weather report used Airport data for the minimum, but Orchard Drive data for the maximum.

But whichever temperature you pick, it’s a bit lower than average in more than one sense! The climatological average monthly maximum for June is about 8C. But usually, the town’s location is also quite a but higher than shown on her map! Is that an embarrassed look on the presenter’s face?

In truth its lucky that Alexandra still appears at all. In a recent revamp of the weather presentation to its current dog’s breakfast, Alexandra disappeared completely for a while. I wrote them a letter pointing out the errors of their ways and asking if they realised they didn’t have any representation from the most extreme climate region in the country - Central Otago. Because Queenstown and Wanaka are further west there’s more over-spill rain across the main divide and it tends to be wetter. Temperatures there are also less extreme because of the moderating influence of their lake waters. Maybe my letter had an effect, though I wasn’t the only complainant.

For some reason everyone north of the Waitaki River seems to forget that Wanaka and Queenstown are not in Central Otago (although Wanaka at least has a historical claim).

They are part of the Central Lakes District, rather than Central Otago. And, as anybody who lives here knows, there’s a World of Difference.

Come to think of it, the Electoral Commission also seems to think that Alexandra has moved. They must have been watching too much TV. We used to be part of the Waitaki electorate, but have just been relegated to Southland.