In Auckland, winter is an exercise in wishful thinking.
Last June, the city’s mean average temperature was 13 degrees. This is the recommended temperature for storing a good red wine or around the same level of cold you’ll find in a modern vegetable crisper.
Am I suggesting lettuce is tougher than Aucklanders? If the (ridiculously unnecessary) hat fits …
The data is quite compelling. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, for example, records a “frost day” when the air temperature falls below zero at 1.2m off the ground.
In 2022, Christchurch experienced 44 frost days. Invercargill had 33, Queenstown had 60 – and Auckland had none.
It was a little colder at soil level. The most recent ground frost data I could find was from 2020 when Christchurch shivered through 85 crunchy mornings. Invercargill had 67, Queenstown had 117 – and Auckland had four.
I’ve lived in proper cold. In Manitoba, Canada, where my damp nostril hairs froze together when I breathed in. In student-poor Timaru, where there was a hole in the bathroom floor and condensation icicles on the sloping kitchen roof.
Nobody should have to live in dank and mouldy houses, or huddle together for heating.
When I tell Auckland to stop being a wuss about winter, I am 100% talking about office workers who have thermal-lined curtains and somewhere to store a summer-weight duvet.
Have you ever taken a 7.30am weekday bus down Dominion Rd in June? There’s less insulation in your ceiling.
Puffer jacket-clad commuters squash against each other like a bag of human marshmallows. It’s hot enough to melt cheese on their wool-wrapped torsos, but they’re happily browsing their phones for a $115 Karen Walker mohair blend bonnet (“combines heritage charm with modern ease”).
An office worker regrets not buying the mohair blend bonnet.
Fashion has a vested (and hatted, gloved and scarved) interest in convincing middle-class Auckland it feels the cold.
It trades on the fact that humans like to change clothes with the season. It ignores that all of the seasons have blurred into one monsoon-adjacent downpour. The most useful thing in an Auckland “winter” wardrobe is an umbrella, not a polar fleece gilet.
You don’t know what a gilet is?
Unless you are a Lego figure or your job requires you to locate the 50-grit sandpaper, please reconsider the sleeveless puffer.
If you live in Auckland, you could just harden up. I checked the app and it was 17 degrees. In December, you’d be at the beach.
Faux winter looks silly and tastes marginal. The average outdoor temperature might be perfect for storing salad leaves, but Ponsonby is pureeing a parsnip and calling it dinner ($25 truffle supplement optional). Is there a rule that says we should only eat dribbly food in winter? The one time I’ve been grateful for a redundantly seasonal scarf is when it saved my white shirt from a minestrone.
Meanwhile, back in the superheated office that will smell like reheated soup until at least September, my colleagues wear three layers and protest that they are genuinely suffering. They say things like “My mother has always been cold” or “I have genetically ice hands. People think I’m dead”. I’m not here to judge their families or their circulation or their will to live but I suspect there are simpler truths at play.
Aucklanders can’t stand missing out. They are competitive to a fault. Everything must be bigger, better and literally cooler. It does not suit the supercity’s narrative to admit to a faux winter.
Am I skating on thin ice? Doubtful. That would require an outdoor temperature of 0 degrees or less.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk.