Is Auckland windier than Wellington?

Has Auckland beaten Wellington to be NZ's windiest city? (Getty)
Has Auckland beaten Wellington to be NZ's windiest city? (Getty)

Auckland is known for its windy spring weather, but October and November have felt especially gusty, with seemingly constant high winds causing all manner of discomfort.

The wicked winds have inflamed house fires and made maritime conditions incredibly dangerous.

It has also turned the city's motorways into concrete wind tunnels, brought down trees and sent washing flying across the suburbs.

NIWA meteorologist Ben Noll has crunched the numbers, and says Auckland is actually getting slightly fewer days of high wind this spring than in previous years.

"I dug into the last ten years of Auckland days with gale force wind gusts, and the first metric I calculated was wind gusts higher than 62km/h.

"Now over the last ten years the average amount of days from September 1 through to November 27, the days of gale force gusts is 16.

"In 2016 over that period, Auckland has had 14 days of gale force gusts, so actually in terms of gale force, or gusts that you might consider close to the damaging level, we are near or just slightly below the last ten years average." says Mr Noll.

Again, Mr Noll's research is quite surprising.

"If you take a look at days with wind gusts that were lower than 30 km/h, we've actually recorded the second fewest amount of those days in the last ten years - just five days from September 1 through to November 27.

Mr Noll says the type of wind Auckland has been copping on a regular basis this spring is more of a nuisance wind.

"It's the wind you notice going to work or when your umbrella or rubbish bin blows away, stuff like that."

Mr Noll says weather patterns in this part of world are simply more active in spring, because weather systems are in a transitional period.

"We have active weather fronts moving across the Tasman from Australia and these bring gusty winds, and if you do look at the overall weather patterns, say through November, we've had the tendency for storms to track south down the country and higher pressure north of the country."

So unfortunately for Aucklanders, their city's location in the middle of this weather system means it has potential for copping more wind at this time of year than even Wellington gets.

"The best news is that summer starts on Thursday," says Mr Noll.

"So while you don't flick a switch necessarily from wind to no wind, we're heading into that time of the year when the weather is most satisfying.

"But we do have some windy days ahead early this week, and perhaps some lightening winds as we go into the later stages of the week, so that's certainly some good news."

So the message for fed-up Aucklanders is this: suck it up, summer's on the way and the winds will hopefully die down soon.

Newshub.