Would it be too gross a generalisation to suggest that for many of us the weather is a subject that flits across the conversational radar at least once a day, be it by way of a few words spoken to a colleague in a lift or a partner across the breakfast table? Even, perhaps, to the kids? (Don't forget your jacket; it's going to . . .) And such words are no modern-day phenomenon.
In his 1856 book, The Philosophy of the Weather: and a guide to its changes, Thomas Belden Butler writes of the weather's powerful ability to "limit our pleasures and amusements, control the realities of today and the anticipations of tomorrow".
Though the introduction to his book is both enthusiastic and rather lengthy, what Butler means, in short, is that the weather affects us all in one way or another.
Dunedin author, city councillor and handyman Dave Cull knows this, too.
Like Butler, he has written a book on the subject, though Cull has chosen a more visual approach for Big Weather South.
It's a case of fewer words, more pictures; why not let the sky tell the story? Cull, in collaboration with Otago Daily Times staff photographers, examines the impact of the weather on those who have chosen to live in the South, how it has shaped the region and its characters through drought, flood, frosts and gales.
As he says, "We seem to get a lot of everything in the South".
Following a conversation (about the weather, of course) with a Longacre editor, and building on a similar format to that employed for Cull's 2007 book, Icebergs: the Antarctic comes to town, which featured photographs by ODT illustrations editor Stephen Jaquiery, Cull's latest effort was completed earlier this year and will be released later this month.
"It puts together a really interesting subject, the weather, with the incredible resource that the ODT has in the way of photos," Cull explains in a recent telephone interview.
"Weather is very visual. Just writing about it isn't enough."
Thus his book is more likely to rest on a coffee table than within the shelves of any Metservice office.
"I didn't go into the scientific stuff too much. I tried to make it a narrative without getting into chemical equations etc . . . I thought that having the Maori stories was another perspective; it gives another angle and texture to it."
At the core of Big Weather South is a celebration of seasons, though the variable conditions that buffet and bake our collection of islands in the mid-latitudes of the South Pacific Ocean can blur the boundaries between, say, winter and spring, particularly in the South.
"It's a place of extremes. You get a blizzard that covers from the coast to the mountains. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does you know about it.
"It's not always benign, that's for sure. We take for granted the benign aspect of it; we work out that there is a certain amount of rainfall here, sunshine there, so we can grow grapes, good wool, whatever," Cull says, pointing to events such as the 1863 flood in which an unknown number of gold-miners were killed as Otago rivers rose rapidly.
"Our lifestyles, our vocations, what we do, are moulded by the weather. I think that our psyches and our culture are, too. I think it affects people's moods. I know people who, if it's unpleasant weather, get quite down. I think, what a waste of energy; you can't do anything about it."
Try telling that to Jim Hickey, TV One's weatherman, who has been accused of ruining everything from weddings to profitable hay harvests.
In New Zealand, he says, everyone is a weather expert.
"Whether you are a crayfisherman in Northland, or if you've got an orchard or cropping business in Blenheim, a dairy farm in the Waikato, or collect flounder in the Hokianga Harbour, everyone has got their spin on it. Because we are an agrarian country, people spend a lot of time outside. It's a nature of our pioneering heritage, I guess."
Hickey, who made his first weather broadcast for TVNZ in 1988, took a break between 2003-2007 to look after his elderly parents, and resumed in 2007, says he gets less flak now than when he started, largely due to an increased accuracy in forecasts, though timing remains an issue.
"The difficulty I've got is we [TV One's 6pm news programme] have one crack at it - at 6.50pm each day - to tell the weather for the next day, so there is a fairly big lead-in time before people actually see the results of what we're talking about.
"That's why breakfast television is big in other parts of the world. People get their weather hit at the start of the day. It's having that finger on the pulse.
"In New Zealand, it's timing. Metservice might forecast a front is coming over Buller tomorrow afternoon, but it might slow down a bit or speed up and end up over Cook Strait.
"The weather processes are always there; it's a matter of pinpointing when they are going to touch down and affect our lives. That's the challenge.
"Christchurch is a great example of that. You can get the screaming nor' wester - the mad gog, I call it. People can go a bit potty because of all the positively charged ions in the wind. It can be 21deg there, then a southerly can hit and it can drop 10deg in an hour. It's dramatic.
"Or take the uniqueness of Central Otago with its continental weather. That basin in Alexandra or the Southern Lakes . . . it can be really cold in Central Otago, but because the air is so dry it doesn't feel so incisive and uncomfortable.
"Then you get Auckland, of course; we often call it the swamp, because you get southwesterlies, northwesterlies, convergent sea breezes that push up the moisture."
Manager of public weather services at Metservice's Wellington headquarters, a 29-year veteran in the science of forecasting, Kreft says New Zealand's position on the globe makes it an exciting place from which to watch the weather.
Situated approximately halfway between the equator and the South Pole, we occasionally see weather patterns that are sometimes of an almost purely tropical nature (such as cyclones or former tropical cyclones), while air masses from the south can be, as Hickey and his ilk sometimes gleefully announce, polar blasts.
"A feature of New Zealand's weather is the sheer speed at which things can occur," Kreft says.
"We can have systems pass by New Zealand very quickly . . . you might have a number of wind direction changes and precipitation events in one 24-hour period.
"I absolutely love it. I think all meteorologists do. It is a significant challenge to keep up with it and understand it all. Personally, I can't think of a better place to do it than New Zealand."
Weather systems are the result of contractions between the air of the colder regions and that of the warmer regions.
This is what drives the westerly wind patterns often, but not always, responsible for New Zealand's weather.
"The atmosphere is a heat engine," Kreft explains.
"You've got a hot equator and cold poles and the flows in the atmosphere and ocean are basically trying to bring everything to equilibrium. The events in the atmosphere and ocean are the consequence of that."
Take a look at a typical weather map.
New Zealand might be at the centre of it, with Australia and a significant part of the Pacific and southern oceans also there.
There's a good reason for their inclusion: the systems that bring the weather to a particular place are large.
To make a prediction about anything, a gathering of facts is required.
To make effective weather predictions here, the science of meteorology ranges well beyond the skies and shores of New Zealand.
Enter the World Meteorological Organisation, of which New Zealand is a member.
Represented by the Metservice and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), New Zealand supplies information to the global network. More importantly, it gains enormously from the data, freely provided, some of which includes richer countries' satellite services.
"It never stops. Each country has an observing network that is suited to its needs and a lot of that data will be made available internationally at set times."
Key tools for forecasters include: satellites (which don't just look at clouds but also measure sea and land surface temperatures); land-based weather stations (which gather data, once a minute, on temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and direction); weather radar (reading rain speed, direction and density); "upper-air network" readings (taken from instruments on weather balloons and larger aircraft, these provide information on air temperature and humidity); and computer modelling (whereby data is collected and analysed, both locally and globally).
"The weather systems that affect NZ have developed somewhere else - over the Tasman Sea, over the sea to the north of us. Sometimes, we get something that has developed right over the top of us. The troposphere that has caused that is related to events elsewhere in the globe. You can't take a narrow view."
The weather can have a major impact on New Zealanders' lives.
On the Insurance Council of New Zealand's website is a measurement of the cost of natural disasters.
Most are weather related.
Last year, storms, flooding and hail strikes resulted in claims totalling more than $85 million.
Thus it's important to get forecasts right.
"Every severe weather warning we issue is assessed for its accuracy when the event is complete," Kreft says.
"I report to my chief executive every month and he in turn reports to his board. We know what our accuracy is like on a month-to-month basis and per event."
In its 2007-2008 annual report, Metservice recorded 87% accuracy for its warnings of heavy rain, severe gales and heavy snow to June, while false alarms for the same period were 27% or less.
"That is the result of a huge amount of work here and overseas, the sum total of improvements in the observing network, satellite sensing techniques, better weather modelling, forecasters' skill improvements . . . you name it," Kreft says.
"As professionals, we have a very keen scientific interest in our subject. Nothing is more important than getting the forecast right."
Big Weather South (Longacre/Otago Daily Times, pbk, $29.99) is published later this month.
