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At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Trev den Baars didn’t want to go to work, he wanted to put on his robe and go swimming.
After all, it was already 24 degrees Celsius.
And it was just a sign of what was to come. Canterbury suffered temperatures well above 30 ° C for the second day in a row. From Timaru to Blenheim, the South Island warmed up in the sun on Wednesday.
Den Baars, who owns two bars with his wife in the inner city of Methven, thought the attic under the iron roof of one of his bars reached 50 ° C on Tuesday.
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STACY SQUIRES / Stuff
People flocked to Christchurch’s New Brighton Beach on Tuesday when the mercury peaked at 37.1 ° C.
He was there with a refrigeration specialist as he tried to keep the motors that powered his freezers running.
The engines struggled in temperatures above 30 ° C and generally peaked at 36 ° C.
Den Baars said it kept seven of its eight walk-in freezers running.
Sleeping on Tuesday night was a “waste of time”, as the temperature hovered around 20ºC.
Methven officially reached 34.2 ° C on Tuesday, but den Baars said the northwesterly wind made the day feel “increasingly hot.”
In the city of Christchurch, the temperature on Tuesday reached 37.1 ° C and on Wednesday it supported it reaching about 35 ° C at 2 pm
But the heat was not expected to last, with rain and a manageable high of 22 ° C forecast on Thursday.
Overall, however, the number of hot days is expected to continue to rise in the coming decades as climate change raises New Zealand’s baseline temperature and brings longer and more frequent heat waves.
The blast of heat on Tuesday and Wednesday also caused some problems with roads and water supplies.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transportation Agency (NZTA) travel manager Tresca Forrester said some sections of the highway melted on Tuesday, mainly on State Highway 1 in Hundalees and the SH7 over Lewis Pass.
“Road temperatures ranged from 40 to 50 degrees both north and south of Canterbury.”
Forrester said the problems weren’t major, but that contractors came out Wednesday “cushioning critical points … to minimize melting.”
Helen Beaumont, director of Three Water and Waste for the Christchurch City Council, said keeping up with the demand for drinking water during prolonged periods of heat was one of the biggest challenges for the council.
“Normal household use is not a problem, it is the huge increase in outdoor water use, particularly garden irrigation, that is difficult to track,” he said.
STACY SQUIRES / Stuff
Jia Wang, left, and her mother, You Chao Wang, enjoyed a ride through the waves in New Brighton to cool off on Tuesday.
The demand for water on a hot day can sometimes increase up to five times compared to a normal winter day. The council had already established water restrictions in the city of Christchurch and parts of the Banks Peninsula, including Akaroa.
Heathcote Councilor Sara Templeton wrote on Facebook that the Mt Pleasant and Redcliffs areas were in “extreme demand” for water Wednesday afternoon and that the local water reservoir was struggling to refill.
“Please urgently limit water use indoors only,” he wrote.
Despite the warm weather on Wednesday in Christchurch, it was not as warm as Blenheim, which reached 35.5 ° C around 2.30 pm Meanwhile, Timaru reached 32 ° C in the morning.
A spokeswoman for Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) reminded people that all of Canterbury and much of the upper South Island had suspended all fire permits.
Miter 10 Mega Timaru store manager Dave Ferguson said there was a failure in the air conditioning equipment, as well as many people buying swimming pools.
“The fans are selling particularly well at the moment and we’ve made sure the staff take care of themselves and drink plenty of cold fluids throughout the day,” he said.
Hawke’s Bay was also facing scorching temperatures on Wednesday, reaching 30 ° C, but there would be a big drop on Friday, which was forecast to reach only 18 ° C.
Fire crews have been keeping busy in the region after fighting 11 vegetation fires in the last week.
Crews were called to a large grass fire near Hastings Wednesday afternoon. They managed to contain the 300 meter long grass fire in a matter of minutes.
Fenz Hawke’s Bay Area Commander Ken Cooper said there had been 50 structure fires in the region since November, most caused by unsupervised cooking.
