Weather in Duh-knee-din

We've received a few requests to blog about the weather, since it's winter here and where most of you are, it's a blistering summer. But...we realized that you may not know how to pronounce Dunedin, so we wanted to get that out of the way first.  It's pronounced DUH-knee-din, not Dune-uh-din.  Dunedin is Gaelic for Edinburgh, the city it was designed after.  Dunedin is incredibly hilly - it's a lot like San Francisco.  You can't get anywhere without going up a hill, and the likelihood is high that hill will be quite steep. 

Now back to the weather.  I would guess that the average high temperature since we arrived has been in the high 40s/low 50s, but that doesn't take into account that it's pretty damp.  The combination of damp and cool equals getting chilled pretty easily, at least for us.  It rained A LOT the first couple weeks we were here, but it's been much more sporadic since.  There hasn't been any snow here in Dunedin nor has there been a frost, at least at our elevation.  Neighborhoods/hills around us that just a couple hundred meters further up have had frost.

It's the 'weather' inside that has actually been the most challenging for us.  Houses in Dunedin (and I think in most of New Zealand) don't have central heating.  People just heat the rooms that they spend a considerable amount of time in - which on the sustainability side of things makes a lot of sense.  Why heat a bathroom all day long if you're only going to be in it for a few minutes a few times a day?  Same with bedrooms.  Hence the penchant for hot water bottles and electric blankets.  Heat yourself, not the room.

They have heat pumps (blowers mounted on the wall) in the lounge (living room) which heat just that room.  In all the houses we've been in, there are doors from the lounge/living area (which may include the kitchen) to the rest of the house, so the heat can be kept in that one room.  Vanessa's bathroom also has a heater mounted on the wall, and it warms the room up pretty quickly on a cold morning.  Our office at OUSA has four space heaters which do a pretty good job of keeping us warm.

As a result, staying warm inside is all about the layers.  The most popular layering options are merinos, polyprops, and thermals, and Todd and I have bought them all.  Thanks to the plethora of sheep, you can find merino wool layers at all price points.  The merinos I bought were $30-$40 NZD each.  Todd got some thermals, and we both loaded up on polyprops (another version of thermals) at Kathmandu (NZ's LL Bean/REI) during their annual extreme winter sale.  They all make AMAZING base layers.  Between the two of us, we've bought a ton of these.  I now own 5 merinos and 4 polyprops, and Todd has 2 thermals, 3 polyprops, and 2 new wool sweaters.  The long-sleeved cotton shirts I brought are worthless in terms of keeping me warm.  I now just wear them over one of these base layers.

Now that the midwinter solstice has passed, we're headed towards summer!  YAHOO!!  Since the seasons are off, I get really confused when people say spring, summer, fall.  I have no idea what months those entail, so I made myself a little US to NZ seasons conversion chart.  I matched up the months with the shortest nights (June in NZ, December in the US) and adjusted from there. 

• US                 NZ
• January          July
• February       August
• March           September
• April             October
• May              November
• June              December
• July               January
• August          February
• September    March
• October       April
• November    May
• December     June

So March in New Zealand is like September in the States.  October in New Zealand is like April in the States (and we're going to Sydney in October, so that will be lovely!).  While coming to the southern hemisphere in May may not have been the smartest move weather-wise,  we don't care because a) we'll have a year of spring-summer when we return and b) we live in New Zealand.  :)