When is a headlines a LIE?

Once again I am moved to write about the way that the mass media misleads (I would go further, and says LIES) about something as basic as the winter.

Every time a weather low comes through “autumn" (or even "winter") is on its way

We are into April and following a few genuinely cool days which also brought a huge downpour to the capital the temperatures up right up there again up to 24 degrees Celsius.

Just over a week ago on a visit to the farm to visit the horses I measured temepratures of just short of 30 degrees Celsius in the grass and in the shade.

I described this in this selfie:

These temperatures are FAR HIGHER than the average for this time of year and even exceed the AVERAGE MAXIMUM for this time of year by many degrees.

If the following chart is accurate, the 'winter' weather that we were thrust into didn't even make it down to AVERAGE MINIMUM for February!!.

Well, I can tell you why the temperatures are so high in a very simple way that the pundits never will - an ongoing marine heatwave that this map shows is affecting New Zealand even more than Australia.

So why does the mainstream media misinform its readers so much about not only the climate  but also the WEATHER?

There has been more than ever in the media about climate change, informing people that they may have to move away from the coast some time in the next hundred years (sic).  Then they spare no effort to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with headlines like the ones below.

Every time there is an extreme weather event which lasts a few days before the temperatures rise again the headlines tell us that we are moving into 'autumn' - and sometimes even that we are moving into 'winter'.

They are never going to tell you about the trees that lose their leaves far too late or come into flower in the depths of winter. As I have pointed out previously the last year where I recall a classic winter in the capital with regular frosts was wasy back in 2003.

Quite frankly, with official and media coverage I do not blame ordinary folks for being very confused, even sceptical - the information is so contradictory, so misleading.
Just take the following headlines:

One particularly egregious example of what I would call BULLSHIT is this headline from just under a year ago- they were predicting the coldest winter in years

And what was the reality of the "coldest winter in years"?
As you can see from this report from NIWA the winter in 2018 was New Zealand’s 6th-warmest on record

A mild winter for much of the country and dry in parts of the South Island

Winter 2018 was New Zealand’s 6th-warmest on record. Temperatures were above average (+0.51°C to +1.20°C of the winter average) or near average (-0.50°C to +0.50°C of the winter average) for most of the country. Winter temperatures were well above average (> +1.20°C of the winter average) for much of north Canterbury, and a few other isolated inland locations.
***
I am moved to write about this at regular intervals.
Here are a couple of previous items.

How the weather service lies about daily temperatures

As I have pointed out I have been keeping a record of daily temperatures at home in Alicetown, Lower Hutt.

Mid-winter in Lower Hutt, New Zealand - Why OFFICIAL temperatures diverge so much from actual ones

Mid-winter in Lower Hutt, New Zealand

What I have noticed and have been recording is how daily temperatures have been warmer than that reported by Metservice. In particular the minimum temperatures have been much warmer than what one would “expect” and what has been reported on the internet.

For example the other day the minimum night-time termperature was a toasty 12 degrees Celsius whereas Metservice reported the minimum temperature as being 8 degrees Celsius.

The maximum temperature for the day was reported as 12 degrees. It was over this at breakast time and reached almost 20 degrees!

I decided to ring Metservice to get their explanation for this state of affairs.

After a long-winded explanation from a helpful meteorologist it turned out that the situation is that the temperatures I read every day are a forecast the comes from a model which uses average temperatures as part of the equation.

In other words, nothing that has any bearing with reality!!

The discussion is recorded below:

If I want the actual recorded temperatures I have to scroll down further.

"You’ll see the forecast high and low for today at the top of the tab (14C and 8C respectively).

"The observed temperatures you can see to the left of the line in the graph portion of the image (you can see the lowest temperature recorded this morning was 12C between 4am-6am).

"If you would like to check out weather observations further back from today you will have to scroll down the webpage (past the headings for Social Media Gallery and Maps, Radars and Videos) to the ‘Past Weather’ heading. This is a great resource for checking observations. The default view will show maximum/minimum temperatures, total rainfall and maximum wind gust and wind speed for each day in the past 30 days. You can change this to show you more detailed info for the yesterday only, or less detailed info for the 2 years along with the historical averages"

Warmer-than-usual weather in NZ as we head towards an el-Nino

In my 62 years on the planet – or most of it – May has always meant the beginning of the cold weather and the first frosts.

It is in the nighttime temperatures I notice the biggest difference. I have been waking up in the middle of the night sweating under my duvet. Never mind the colder South Island but the statistics tell me the mean lowest temperatures for Lower Hutt where I love should be 6.9C.

When I woke last night it was 12C

The statistics that the average temperature should  be 12.1C and the mean highest temperare is 15.0C.

Today, according to the internet the temperature late-morning is 15C whereas my thermometer in the garden tells me it is 17C.

That is a pretty significant deviation from the norm.

You'l have to take my word for it but we are 3 weeks into May and the temperatures have hardly been any different throughout that time.

We have not yet had anything that is close to a frost in that 3 weeks.

Meanwhile the media (mostly overseas as far as I can ascertain from DuckDuckGo) has reproted the largest wave ever recorded - 78 feet (23.8 meters).