The rain-drenched areas of Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay should be in for some relief from the cloud and wet as El Niño should bring a different synoptic pattern to our weather in 2023.

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The economic costs of frost to agriculture and horticulture can be significant. As winter and early spring frost in Australia and New Zealand is almost exclusively ‘radiative’ in nature, it forms predictable patterns as a function of surrounding topography and land use.

If frosts had struck, the cold would have stripped vines of their leaves, leaving bare canes unable to push sugar into grapes. That would have been a major disaster for the wine industry, Mr Powell said.