IT WAS a witty and perceptive person who coined the term “Maypril”. There was no slowdown in the advance of spring this year, with the countryside as well as gardens blossoming well ahead of the calendar.

April Fools’ Day gave no indication of what was to come, being cloudy and cool. The next day couldn’t have been sunnier, but cloud returned that night to give a grey, drizzly day on Good Friday, April 3. As the depression responsible moved away, the wind gusted to gale force in the evening of Saturday, April 4, before veering to the north-west on Easter Day. There were showers around, but a sunny afternoon gave way to a clear night with a slight air frost.

The bank holiday Monday was the first of three days in a row enjoying almost unbroken sunshine. A warm, gentle breeze from the south-east helped to raise the temperature in Wellington to 23.5⁰C (74⁰F) on Tuesday, April 7, the earliest date on record for such a high maximum in this area. The following day was almost as warm, but then a weak weather front gave a couple of cloudy days with some light rain in the small hours of Friday, April 10. The next day was the coldest in the month, with a maximum of just 12⁰C (54⁰F) and a gusty wind that brought sharp showers, including hail.

Through the middle part of the month there were variable amounts of sunshine, with temperatures fluctuating wildly, depending on the direction of the wind. A wet spell in the middle of the day on Wednesday, April 15, gave 3mm (0.12 inch) of rain in Wellington, making that the wettest day, while another short burst of rain in the afternoon of Friday, April 17, would prove to be the last precipitation in the month.

With an anticyclone centred to the north, our part of the country lay under a cool flow of air from an easterly quarter. Winds were mostly light, and with clear skies there was a most unusual sequence of seven nights with a ground frost in Wellington, but that week starting on Sunday, April 19, was also exceptionally sunny. Daytime temperatures responded well, and seven of the last eight days of the month saw maxima reaching or exceeding 20⁰C (68⁰F). The exception was Tuesday, April 28, a chilly day with a gusty wind from the east which brought heavy cloud that cleared too late in the afternoon to really make a difference.

With sunshine and a warm breeze on the last day of the month giving a maximum temperature in Wellington of almost 23⁰C (73⁰F) and lilac blossom already past its best, we seemed to be prematurely on the brink of summer. It ended up as the equal-fifth warmest April on record, with a mean temperature of 10.7⁰C (51.3F), while the total rainfall of 14mm (0.56 inch) in Wellington was only 20 per cent of the average. And it was almost as sunny as April 2025.