2013 New Zealand winter storm [20 June] it moved across Cook Strait to create a new low just east of Kaikoura... that was the real kick in pants that caused a clockwise circle of wind." -Associate Professor James Renwick at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University has researched how polar conditions affect our weather. "To get an event like this, which is pretty extreme, we need the westerly wind that normally blows across New Zealand and the southern oceans to slow down and to buckle into a series of big meanders, north-south waves around the hemisphere." The air was so
New Zealand mole cricket New Zealand mole cricket The New Zealand mole cricket ("Triamescaptor aotea") is a wingless member of the mole cricket family Gryllotalpidae. Endemic to New Zealand, it lives underground and is rarely seen. It is now restricted to parts of the southern North Island. The mole cricket was well known to Māori, who encountered it when cultivating garden plots and called it honi. Mole crickets collected in New Zealand were assumed to be the European species "Gryllotalpa vulgaris" (a synonym of "Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa"), which has a wingless nymph that resembles the adult New Zealand species. "Triamescaptor aotea" was named and described