Monthly Central Otago Weather Summary

Today is and summer has firmly taken hold. Over the next months the young berries will develop into bunches and begin to ripen. Veraison marks the start of the ripening period and is when the berries turn from green to red (in red varieties). The estimated days to veraison are

Last month's weather - 2011 December (spring)
The weather during December was hot and dry. The average daily temperature was 18.3 C with a hefty 256 GDD’s recorded. Afternoon temperatures rose above 30 C on 9 occasions and the lowest overnight temperature was 5 C. Only 10 mm of rain fell on the evenings of the 5th (3 mm) and the 15th (7 mm) and the average wind speed was a modest 7.7 km/hr. Overall December was a great growing.

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The Central Otago is large and diverse region with vineyards located from the valley floors (150 metres above sea level) to the lower terraces of mountain ranges (450 metres). The observations given here are from one vineyard and are only generally respresentative of the entire region. The three charts below give the long term climatic averages, over the growing season, for the site (250 metres ASL) described above.

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