Summer has begun and the forecast is: it’s hot and breezy and wet and dry. We explain what’s going on, and what you can expect over the coming months.

A cloudless sky rains down on dry soil, and children play in the hot puddles. Every night you put the laundry in the oven, grab a plate of Chardonnay, and turn on the radio. It’s time to watch the weather.

Coming this week, says your choice of weatherperson, half a metre of rain is falling sideways down south. The north is avoiding bad weather completely except for the gales in Wellington and the downpours in the Bay of Plenty and the high fire danger in Gisborne. 

Basically, the degree of incoming weather chat is set to burst the barometer. To master the art of climate observing in this, our most hectic of times, please read this handy explainer.

Can I go to the beach this weekend?

Yes! “Hot water beach” is about to be re-named “normal temperature water beach” because the ocean is warm now! Get in there, kids! 

The entire North Island will be dry as a bone by the weekend, except for the Bay of Plenty and Taranaki. It will also be really hot. The South Island will be hot but also very rainy on the West Coast, but there’s nothing new there. Pop up the Marlborough Sounds for your beach trip.

Is it going to be hot?

Yes – from now until the end times! Although everyone gets rain, everyone also gets sunshine. The North Island has a go first and then around February the south gets a turn on it.

This weekend Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay are once again taking the cake for heat, with temperatures around 30 degrees. Auckland will be very muggy, and Christchurch will have mid-20s temperatures with a strong breeze taking the edge off.

Temperatures are expected to be above average everywhere, forever. Some weather forecasters are saying the coming months will contain “heatwaves,” which seems kind of obvious because it’s summer, and also because the planet is on fire.

Will there be wind and rain?

Also yes! You get rain, and you get rain, and you get rain! But don’t worry, it’s all at different times so if you hire a campervan for the summer you can outrun it. 

This week there are wet northerlies over the whole country fighting with high-pressure heat coming off Australia, so the North Island is getting steamed. Oh, the humidity!

The South Island gets a breezy start to the summer, with strong winds buffeting Cantabrian cows and tearing apart the Kurow hay bale art installation. Storms are expected in Fiordland, Westland, the Alps, and the Bay of Plenty.

In Wellington, persistent showers and gale force winds are expected not just now but at every point in its history. You can’t beat Wellington on a good day, and its good day should turn up around Christmas.

Flooding is expected on the west coast as Papatūānuku drags Greymouth gold back underground where it belongs. Actually, any South Islander living next to a river should put their belongings high up this week. 

How will the weather affect primary industries?

The weather is as cooked as a Kerikeri car bonnet, and the fish are as confused by this as we are. Sea snakes and kraits are turning up in Taranaki and Tauranga, snapper are moving to the South Island, and cod are fucking off to Antarctica. Fisherpeople may need longer lines or larger hunting grounds to find where our favourite seafood stores are chilling out. 

Dry soil in the north and the east of the North Island is bad news for both farmers and cafes, as the Australian drought pops over and sinks its hot little claws into our local avocado farms. Rain will come, but not soon enough. Napier has already put water restrictions in place, and we know the Wairarapa struggles to cope with the dry season. Later in the summer, Canterbury and Gore will likely put restrictions in place. 

Why is this happening?

The summer’s hectic start is a little more dramatic than most years, but not wholly unusual. “The spring weather pattern in New Zealand doesn’t really stop until the end of December,” said WeatherWatch’s Philip Duncan. However, the scale of the unsettled weather is pretty abnormal. “What is unusual is the size and depth of the storm down in the Southern Ocean for this entire week,” he said. This storm is responsible for the South Island’s wind and rain this week.

“At the same time, the top of the country has an almost non-stop subtropical airflow not just for the end of November but the start of December,” he said. This is what’s keeping temperatures high. The source of all the hot air is, as usual, Australia. “This is the reason why the upper North Island and the eastern North Island are showing signs of being quite dry now.” Sadly, the Southern Ocean storm is too far away to soothe the dessicated land.

The release of an anonymous lab report that found massive 1080 concentrations prompts Dave Hansford to ask: is history repeating itself?

The last week has seen a great deal of discussion about claims made by the anti-1080 front group, Flora and Fauna Aotearoa (F&F), in relation to the deaths of hundreds of rats and other animals that washed up in Westport nearly three weeks ago.

I explored it at length here, but a brief recap: F&F said an “independent laboratory” had found not just traces, but heavy concentrations, of 1080 in the animals. The results contradicted nil results found earlier that week by Landcare Research. F&F released a “lab report” but have refused to reveal where it came from. Since then, agencies, scientists and journalists have been trying to ascertain the identity of the “mystery lab”. Toxicologists, meanwhile, have expressed serious doubts over many of the report’s findings and methodology.

Read part 1:

Dead rats, a mystery lab, and the very curious antics of the anti-1080 lobby

So what, and who, might be involved in the mystery lab? There are a number of similarities, in my view, between the Westport case and a string of other alleged instances of chemical contamination, all of them investigated at the behest of activist groups by Timaru chemist Dr Nick Wall.

Wall cites his academic qualifications as a BSc in chemistry and a PhD in surface chemistry, both from Cardiff University. In 2015, he told Stuff that he read several hundred pages of scientific papers a day, and slept only two hours a night. He has charged that “old boys’ clubs” are hiding “dirty secrets” around New Zealand. “The place is a cesspit.”

When I asked him to comment on the mystery lab report, he dismissed my inkling that he might be involved. “I do not see why you may think I know anything worthwhile on this particular topic,” he wrote in an email.

A string of coincidences had led me to wonder whether history was repeating itself. In the summer of 2015, the Opihi Catchment Environment Protection Society commissioned Wall to test sediment from the Opuha lake bed, north of Fairlie, for DDT. That July, the society announced on national television that Wall’s tests had confirmed the evidence of a toxic dump with DDT levels high enough, said Wall, to “bankrupt” the local regional council, Environment Canterbury.

A search with ground-penetrating radar found no such dump. Divers took sediment and fish samples from the same site that, on testing by Hill Laboratories in Hamilton, ALS Laboratories in Australia and Asure Quality in New Zealand, were found to contain none of the DDT that Wall claimed to have detected. ECan chief executive Bill Bayfield told media the DDT investigation had cost ratepayers between $50,000 and $100,000.

A subsequent ECan report concluded that: “Results from the different laboratories showed us the value of using accredited laboratories that have strong quality assurance of their procedures and results.”

Just weeks later, Wall provided protest group GE Free NZ with test results he claimed showed high concentrations of glyphosate in two milk samples. Like his DDT findings, the concentrations were extraordinarily high, but Wall would not give any details about his testing process, or his equipment.

Wall’s work sparked a spate of tests by the Ministry for Primary Industries, which took 360 milk samples from farms and shops during the 2014/2015 milk season. When AsureQuality tested them, they found no trace of glyphosate or any break-down products. GE Free’s claims were never substantiated.

In comments familiar from toxicologists’ appraisals of the mystery 1080 report, a peer reviewer of Wall’s 2012-2013 testing of Rangitata river water samples said in a report to ECan: “I have seen a brief summary of the results of this study, but it is difficult to comment further, as I have not seen the methods and the quality assurance used in the analysis.”

According to a Timaru Herald report at the time, government agencies that investigated Wall’s claims were not able to establish the location of his laboratory.

In May 2015, the Timaru Herald reported that when an MPI official repeatedly asked Wall for details of his samples, he told them a laptop and lab records had been stolen from one of his laboratories. (He insists that at least part of that reporting is not true; a laptop was never stolen.) He has told media that he once received a bullet in the mail and been the victim of vandalism.

In an interview for a previous story about the identity of the “mystery lab”, F&F spokesperson Di Maxwell said she would not disclose the tester’s identity because “he’s had his tyres slashed, he’s had his computer stolen, he had his house vandalised, he had a bullet through the mail. I could go on and on.”

On November 22, Wall posted excerpts from the mystery lab report on his Facebook page.

Wall’s first response to my request for an interview seemed unambiguous. “I do not see why you may think i know anything worthwhile on this particular topic.” He was busy, he said, “but if you wish to submit your questions in writing I shall try and get them answered as well as I can.”

I asked him: “Did you produce the lab report released by Flora and Fauna Aotearoa that found 1080 in the Westport rats?”

He replied in turn: “Who I do work for is none of anybodies (sic) business, but not done anything for them to my knowledge. I am not a member of any 1080 organization, either pro or anti.”

For good measure, he added: “The last media guy who tried to put words into my mouth paid handsomely, as did his editor.”

A follow-up email from Wall – before the publication of this story –advised: “It is a non story mate,,,, you have barked up the wrong tree again and my legal team is picking it apart word by word for factual inaccuracies and supposition……I cannot be bothered to dignify your rubbish with even reading it.”

He continued: “I hope that you and your editors and paymasters have very deep pockets if my boys find anything.”

Speaking of finding things, I then cut and paste the lab results pdf into Microsoft Word, which had the effect of revealing the redacted laboratory details. A further coincidence appeared: the lab supervisor’s initials are NW.

When I asked Flora and Fauna Aotearoa about Wall’s involvement, they threatened to lay a police complaint and take legal action.

Absent any overwhelming evidence, we should, of course, take Dr Wall at his word.

I offered F&F the opportunity to defend their report’s findings, but they were silent. The mystery lab report is, like the rats it tested, dead in the water.