Who would have wanted to be a passenger on the Interislander yesterday before gale force southerlies and huge swells forced sailings to be cancelled?
We copped a battering from the wind from early afternoon through until early this morning with gusts of over 100km/h recorded in Wanganui. And a number of our Taranaki friends awoke to cold, dark homes this morning with widespread power outages after even stronger gales last night.
Things have calmed down a little this morning, but it's still bitterly cold. The North Island skifields will be smiling though, with a huge dump of snow over the weekend just in time for the school holidays. Whatever the weather, someone is happy about it!
The central North Island skifields open for the season today, and the forecast is for a bumper season. Here's the weather and snow forecast for opening day at Turoa:
With a snow base already of almost 1.5 metres, the punters will flock to Turoa today. Around the other side of the mountain, Whakapapa is one decent storm away from being fully operational. Given that the skifields traditionally get the bulk of their snow from late July through to September, there's plenty for the tourist industry to be enthusiastic about.
The prophets of doom were predicting a few years ago that climate change would be the death of the New Zealand ski industry, but there's precious little sign of that happening any time soon. Bookings from Australia are said to be at record highs this year. And businesses in towns like Ohakune, Raetihi and National Park will be rubbing their hands together as the punters start to rock up for their alpine fix. The ski industry is an important part of the local economy there.
We're not skiers ourselves, but we love to see local businesses prosper. And there's every indication that that's exactly what will happen this winter, which is very good news indeed.
