Story: Marlborough region

Page 3. Climate, plants and animals

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Climate

In terms of rainfall, Marlborough consists of three climate zones: the dry Wairau valley and its surrounds, the less dry Kaikōura coast and a wetter northern zone.

Hot enough for you?

The Awatere valley has experienced one of New Zealand’s highest recorded temperature – 42°C – equal with two locations in inland Canterbury.

Blenheim’s average annual rainfall of 711 mm is characteristic of the eastern side of New Zealand and is accompanied by nearly 2500 sunshine hours a year – often the nation’s highest.

Picton, like the rest of the Marlborough Sounds, has a higher rainfall and more moderate climate than Blenheim, and is neither as cold in winter nor as hot in summer as the Wairau valley. Kaikōura has an average annual rainfall of 844 mm, less than Picton.

Carried away

On 3 February 1868 Blenheim was affected by severe flooding. The Marlborough Express reported that Blenheim was submerged, except for the buildings on one ridge, and that the partly built Presbyterian church had floated off its piles and down the river, eventually crashing into the Ōmaka River bridge. ‘[C]attle, sheep and pigs came along swimming for dear life – whole stacks of fencing, timber, and firewood, furniture, boxes, &c., all drifting onwards to the great deep.’1

Flooding

The alluvial Wairau plain is very low-lying and subject to flooding. A major flood occurred in 1868 when an unusual weather pattern caused the Taylor and Wairau rivers to flood simultaneously.

From 1921 the Wairau River Board (known as the Marlborough Catchment and Regional Water Board from 1956 to 1989) engaged in extensive flood-control works. The biggest was the 1963 cutting of a diversion for the Wairau River from Tuamarina to Cloudy Bay.

The Wairau Lagoons (also called the Vernon Lagoons) and Lake Grassmere are both bays cut off by current-borne sedimentation. Lake Grassmere is now used for the production of salt, while the Wairau Lagoons are a wetland management reserve. Grovetown Lagoon is a man-made, cut-off meander loop of the Wairau River.

Plants

At the time of European arrival in the mid-19th century, the northern zone was covered in mixed podocarp and beech forest, with subalpine vegetation on the highest peaks of the Richmond Range and on the summit of Mt Stokes in the Sounds. The much dryer southern zone was mostly tussock and subalpine grassland, with some areas of forest in higher-rainfall zones along the Kaikōura coast and in some inland valleys.

The forests in much of the northern zone were cleared for farming in the later 19th century. Original forest survived in the Richmond Range and in high-altitude parts of the Sounds. Titirangi, a rare hebe, is endemic to Hokianga Harbour in Northland, but is also found in a few locations in the Sounds, where it was introduced by Māori.

From the 1970s extensive tracts of scrubland in the Sounds and on the margins of the Richmond Range were planted in radiata pine, a commercial forestry crop.

Little native forest survives in the southern zone – much of the original vegetation was burnt in an attempt to clear matagouri and Spaniard, prickly plants which impeded access. The impact of humans and grazing animals has accelerated erosion. Large gullies and fans have formed, and the river flats and gorges have filled with shingle. The rock daisy, and the pink and weeping broom, are endemic to the southern zone.

Animals

The Marlborough green gecko is found in mānuka shrubland and coastal scrub around the Sounds. The king shag is endemic to the Sounds, and the Hutton’s shearwater to the Seaward Kaikōura Range.

Marlborough has been home to some well-known cetaceans (dolphins and whales). In Māori tradition the taniwha Tuhirangi (which was probably a dolphin) guided the navigator Kupe to New Zealand. Kupe left Tuhirangi to guide waka through Te Aumiti (French Pass), between D’Urville Island and the mainland. The taniwha lived in a cave called Kaikaiawaro.

From 1888 to 1912 a dolphin nicknamed Pelorus Jack guided vessels into the approaches to French Pass from the north. Māori recognised Pelorus Jack as the return of the taniwha Tuhirangi. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries regular sightings of whales and other cetaceans drew visitors to Kaikōura.

Footnotes:
  1. Marlborough Express, 8 February 1868, p. 3. Back
How to cite this page:

Malcolm McKinnon, 'Marlborough region - Climate, plants and animals', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/marlborough-region/page-3 (accessed 19 March 2024)

Story by Malcolm McKinnon, published 12 May 2012, updated 1 Nov 2016