New Zealand capital is probably the world’s windiest – and a historian says its gales should stand alongside Bora, Mistral and Fremantle Doctor

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Residents of Wellington are fond of telling people that their city is perfect, with the small exception of a regular visitor: its volatile, destructive wind.

“You can’t beat Wellington on a good day,” they say, plaintively, imagining the handful of days each year when the harbour is still as glass.

While the gale will probably never attract visitors in the same way as New Zealand’s glaciers, beaches and native forests, a historian is urging the capital’s inhabitants, ahead of the its 180th anniversary of European settlement in January, to embrace the wind by giving it a name.

“This is Schwarzenegger wind, this is gladiatorial, this is world-beating wind,” said Redmer Yska, a Wellington-based historian. “But everyone gets so desolate about it.”

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“We know the rest of the country is having the start of a summer, while we’re kind of in Shitsville.”

The blustery southerlies and nor-westerlies of Wellington, which meteorologists say is likely the world’s windiest capital, could join famous winds such as the Bora of the Adriatic coastline, the Mistral south-westerly of France, and the Fremantle Doctor of Western Australia, Yska said.

The historian favours a Māori name such as Hoha - which translates to “annoying” - although other suggestions have included Winston, after the irascible deputy prime minister Winston Peters; The Spoiler; or Voldemort.

On more than 160 days of the year Wellington sees wind gusts at or above 63 kilometres an hour - the wind speed considered gale-force – according to New Zealand’s MetService. The city, at the bottom of the North Island, is essentially a wind tunnel – the path of least resistance between the Tararua Ranges to the north and the Marlborough Ranges at the top of the South Island, the forecaster says.

When European settlers landed in the city in January 1840, it was “bad for business” to discuss the wind that made Wellington “basically uninhabitable”, Yska said.

But later some writers waxed lyrical: in a short story, Katherine Mansfield, the Wellington author, described the gusts thus: “It was a bitter autumn day. The wind ran in the street like a thin dog.”

The process for officially naming a wind is not immediately clear. Yska suggested locals could simply adopt a moniker. Wellington’s mayor, Andy Foster, has said he is not opposed to the idea, but it is not a priority either.



