Always sunny in New Zealand?

So, what’s with the weather in New Zealand? Most people I know have never been to ‘the other side of the World’ and often think New Zealand and also Australia are like a paradise where it’s always warm and sunny.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. I think one of the reasons why we easily come to this conclusion without ever having been there is the fact that the summer and winter periods over there are just the other way around from the way they are over here in Europe. This means, when spring starts here they start going into fall and when we’re in the middle of summer they’re in their winter months. Most popoular is probably any picture of Santa Clause in swimming trunks at a beach, which most of us probably saw in a schoolbook in an English class at school.

I got to know the weather over there when I travelled to Australia two years ago and experienced it myself. I didn’t get to go to New Zealand but thought the climate would be similar to Australia, what is actuallly not that easy to think because Australia has many different climate regions due to it’s size. But when I checked out http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/climate/page-1, I found out that New Zealand is quite long itself as it stretches from latitude 34° to 47° south which means it also has different climate regions throughout the North and South Island. While temperatures on the North Island are subtropical and mostly mild throughout the year, in the South of the South Island there can be lots of snow and one can become active in alpine skiing in the southern alps. For me espacially the snow, mountains and skiing part was kind of surprising because it’s just not necessarlily something you would expect on an Island in the middle of the south pacific ocean.