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
Stoats in New Zealand Stoats in New Zealand Stoats ("Mustela erminea") were introduced into New Zealand to control introduced rabbits and hares, but are now a major threat to the native bird population. The natural range of the stoat is limited to parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Immediately before human settlement, New Zealand did not have any land-based mammals apart from bats, but Polynesian and European settlers introduced a wide variety of animals. The rabbit was introduced by European settlers as a food and game animal, and by the 1870s it was becoming a serious threat to the newly developed farming economy. Farmers began