El Niño Spring Outlook: What to Expect in Five NZ Regions
El Niño has officially been with us for several weeks now, and late winter and early September have given us a taste of what is to come.
They ran countless breathless stories about parts of the country hitting temperatures of – wait for it – 30 degrees on some days.
Well, it is summer and temperatures of 30-plus degrees are not a recent phenomenon, it has been happening at this time of year in NZ for more than 150 years!
Then your old mate read a fanciful opinion piece – on a supposedly respected news website – claiming that these kind of temperatures will mean the end of livestock farming in this country as we know it.
The credibility of said ‘opinonist’ and website was put into perspective when she claimed that NZ currently had a population of “40 million sheep”.
The fact is NZ’s not had 40 million sheep for a number of years with the current flock only around 25 million strong.
