{"id":111266,"date":"2025-10-31T20:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T20:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/111266\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T20:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T20:56:11","slug":"on-the-up-weather-forecasting-rotorua-tortoise-predicts-long-hot-summer-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/111266\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Up: Weather-forecasting Rotorua tortoise predicts long hot summer ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Her track record, Hoyle claimed, showed \u201cshe\u2019s better than MetService\u201d.<\/p>\n

After 65 years of owning Herman, Hoyle said it was impossible not to notice her seasonal habits.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer reaction to waking up and going to sleep \u2026 it coincided with the sort of weather we were getting\u201d.<\/p>\n

Herman spends the colder months tucked into a bale of hay, hibernating early if winter was set to be cold and resurfacing early when warmer days were coming.<\/p>\n

She usually woke up around September 6, Hoyle said, but this year she stirred earlier than expected on August 28.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a sign of \u201clong, hot summer\u201d, Hoyle said.<\/p>\n

Earth Sciences New Zealand\u2019s seasonal outlook for October to December predicted near-average to above-average temperatures nationwide, with the Bay of Plenty and the rest of the northern North Island likely to be warmer than usual.<\/p>\n

Herman\u2019s forecasts only applied to the Bay of Plenty, where she resided.<\/p>\n

Asking her to predict the weather for the entirety of New Zealand would be \u201cexpecting a bit much\u201d, Hoyle said.<\/p>\n

\"RachelRachel Hoyle greets Herman the tortoise, then aged about 85, at the beginning of spring in 2004. Photo \/ Alan Gibson<\/p>\n

But Herman has a habit of surprising people.<\/p>\n

When Hoyle originally imported Herman from the Welsh Mountain Zoo, he guessed she was about 30, but was unable to confirm this as a fire destroyed the zoo\u2019s records.<\/p>\n

Hoyle also assumed the tortoise was male.<\/p>\n

Tortoises were \u201cvery hard to sex until they get quite mature\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

By the time it was realised Herman was actually female, the name had \u201cstuck\u201d.<\/p>\n

She was also known for having a slightly unconventional diet for a tortoise.<\/p>\n

While mostly vegetarian, Herman enjoyed a snail or two.<\/p>\n

Alongside her diet of strawberries and lettuce, Hoyle believed the snails helped her shell.<\/p>\n

Despite tortoises being categorised as slow, Herman once proved she could move well enough when she wanted to.<\/p>\n

In her youth, she escaped her pen and made it 3km down the road to the Lynmore shops \u2013 a journey that took just three days, much to Hoyle\u2019s surprise.<\/p>\n

These days, her adventures occur closer to home.<\/p>\n

She spends her time roaming the Hoyles\u2019 0.2ha (half-acre) Rotorua property and greeting curious local children who come to visit.<\/p>\n

And if her early wake-up is anything to go by, Herman will be doing plenty of her favourite activity this summer \u2013 basking in the sun.<\/p>\n

Animal oracles<\/p>\n

Punxsatawney Phil, the longest-running groundhog seasonal prognosticator in the US, has been picking when spring will arrive since 1887, but a succession of groundhogs are likely to have filled the role over that time.Mojave Max is a tortoise in Las Vegas whose burrow emergency marks the beginning of spring weather.Paul, an octopus in Germany, became a worldwide sensation for his accurate predictions during the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Nelly the fortune-telling elephant at Serengeti Park predicted 30 out of 33 Fifa World Cup matches between 2006 and 2012.Sonny Wool, a Dannevirke-born sheep, picked the winner of every All Blacks game in the 2011 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n

Annabel Reid<\/a> is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke\u2019s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her track record, Hoyle claimed, showed \u201cshe\u2019s better than MetService\u201d. After 65 years of owning Herman, Hoyle said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3017,8212,79630,6101,29529,51584,2190,111,43,139,69,34962,90,79629,9259,1327,38715,79631,54894,213,14625,223,79628,810,4998,79627],"class_list":["post-111266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ahead","tag-anyone","tag-forecaster","tag-good","tag-hoping","tag-hot","tag-long","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oldest","tag-on","tag-predicts","tag-reptile","tag-rotorua","tag-rotoruas","tag-scorcher","tag-spoken","tag-sports","tag-summer","tag-the","tag-tortoise","tag-up","tag-weather","tag-weatherforecasting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}