Climate.

The climate of Canterbury may be said generally to resemble that of Great Britain; but on the plains the mean daily range of temperature is only seventeen degrees Fahrenheit. Observations taken at the Agricultural College, Lincoln, fourteen miles from the city, over a period of ten years, give the following statistics: Mean maximum daily temperature, sixty-one degrees forty-seven minutes; mean minimum daily temperature, forty-three degrees twenty-seven minutes. The extremes of temperature were ninety-two degrees and twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The heat in Canterbury is, therefore, never tropical; and the vague talk about “100 degrees in the shade” which one often hears in nor'-west weather may be safely discounted. During 1900 thirty-three days were sunless, forty-five cloudless, and Christchurch enjoyed just half the possible number of hours of sunshine.

The rainfall for the same period averaged nearly twenty-seven inches (26.809) per annum. The extremes were 35.287 in 1886, and 14.836 in 1890. The average number of days per year on which rain fell was 123—one in every three days. The extremes were 149 days in 1887, and ninety-eight in 1891. The average rainfall for Auckland is thirty-nine inches, for Wellington fortyeight inches, while the average in Otago ranges from thirty-five inches in Dunedin, to something over 100 inches in the West Coast country among the Sounds. Canterbury is thus distinctly drier than the other chief provincial districts, a fact which may be accounted for by the destruction of the bush, the great scope of the plains, and the distance of the hill country from the sea. In Banks' Peninsula, which is composed of hills ranging from 1000 to 3000 feet, the rainfall is much heavier than in any part of Canterbury but the western hill country. The low sandhills which fringe the shore from the Waipara to the end of the Ninety Mile Beach are singularly unfavourable to a coastal rainfall. Of course the hill country in Canterbury is like all other mountainous regions, liable to heavy and continuous rains; and no one who has been caught on Arthur's Pass or in any of the river gorges in a nor'-west rain would speak of Canterbury as dry. At its worst the mountain region rivals the tropics in the intensity and fury of its downpour.

The falls of snow upon the plains are very light, and seldom remain long on the ground. On a few occasions, notably in 1862, in 1879, and in July, 1901, Christchurch has been visited by a storm which has left a foot of snow behind it, and for a few days the city has masqueraded as an Old Country town. But as a rule snow is confined to the uplands. On Banks' Peninsula, Mount Herbert is often snow clad in winter, while the plains and even the Port Hills are bare. Snow is, of course, a great feature of the mountain scenery, and the low level of the snow line—about 6000 feet in summer—makes the Southern Alps remarkably picturesque even in the case of the smaller peaks and ranges. The snow is a serious danger to the pastoral industries in the high lands; the effect of a late snow upon the flocks is most ruinous. The disastrous experiences of the Mackenzie Country and Canterbury sheepfarmers in 1896 will not soon be forgotten.

It may be interesting to compare this climatic evidence with the notes published in Archdeacon Paul's “Letters from Canterbury.” Between 1851 and 1854 it appears that there were only four falls of snow, all light. In 1849, the year before the foundation of the colony, there had been a heavier fall, which lay on the plains for three days. In 1855 the maximum shade temperature was eighty-five degrees, the minimum thirty-two degrees. These figures correspond to a surprising extent with the evidence already cited, and prove that the climate of the province has altered little within the last fifty years.

Canterbury is not so notorious for its winds as Wellington; but the early settlers found that they blew with a persistence and continuity unknown in England. The prevailing wind is east or in Christchurch and the vicinity—northeast. It is, of course, a sea wind, sometimes raw and damp, but seldom rainy. The rainy wind is the south-west—in winter, often a furious storm blast, page 31 bringing torrents of rain and hail. Usually the south-west wind follows upon that most characteristic and remarkable of Canterbury winds, the nor'wester. The north-west wind is all along the West Coast of New Zealand, a rainy wind. In the South Island the moisture with which it is laden is, however, precipitated upon the snow-clad ridges of the Southern Alps. It then sweeps over the sun-scorched plains, and reaches the East Coast as a hot wind, often of tempestuous strength. No one has any clear notion of what rain can mean in Canterbury who has not been up among the ranges in a nor'-wester: and no one can speak with authority about New Zealand winds who has not faced the nor'-wester as it issues from the Rakaia Gorge or some other narrow outlet of the Dividing Range. Towns on the plains, which, like Ashburton, lie opposite the river gorges are exposed to its full fury, and strange stories are told of railway trucks blown from the line, churches levelled with the ground, and roofs of sheds and houses hurtling through the dust-choked air. In Christchurch the effect of the nor'-wester is usually to raise vast clouds of dust, which make the open streets very unpleasant. The temperature of the air is oppressively high, and the atmospheric conditions are strangely electrical; in fact, to some physical organisations, a nor'-wester, especially of the “soft and warm” variety, is a serious trial. But after blowing in furious gusts from this direction, the wind generally hauls round to the south-west, and the son'-wester, accompanied by heavy rain, as a rule lasts as long as its forerunner—in each case about three days. The rapid changes of temperature and atmospheric conditions, and their mechanical regularity, are two of the most notable features of the Canterbury climate.

In 1862 Mr. H. Selfe, then Immigration Officer for the settlement, remarked that a great deal of nonsense had been written about the climate of the province. Allowing for sudden alterations in temperature, the climate, is, he says, as good as in any other part of the world; and as for hygienic conditions, he describes the province as “notoriously healthy.” The climate on the whole seems to strike a happy mean between the relaxing heat of the Auckland summer and the austere severity of the Southland winter, and is in a high degree conducive to the development of mental and bodily health.