what does it all mean?

Three straight days of rain, which in itself doesn't seem strange. We lived in Whistler, British Columbia for about 9 months years ago and it rained for 3 weeks solid when we arrived. We couldn't figure out why everyone was so grumpy until we discovered it had been raining for three weeks before that...

It's apparently been the mildest May on record and the rain has been a relief for some parts of the country where there are dealing with winter droughts and the ski fields are feeling a little relieved now that some snow has fallen.

I'm a little odsessed with the weather down here, partly because I want to understand it more and also because Dunedin has a reputation for awful weather (we were repeatedly warned about it before we moved here) but in reality, it is a wonderful place to live. And the weather is actually pretty good.

Two things, I think, have conspired to give Dunedin's weather it's foul reputation.
[1] for years the weather station used for reporting Dunedin's weather has been waaaaay out in the Taieri Plains, by the airport, where the cold settles in the valley.
[2] the main itinerant population in Dunedin are it's students, and in the main they live in the North-East Valley, possibly the coldest place on Earth, it's dank, filled with substandard rental accomodation and sees very little light of day, but has great parties.

This was not what I planned to talk about today, perhaps I need to think it through more...