A comparison of seasonal classifications for Wellington and Auckland weather
In 2014 a new classification of Wellington’s seasons was proposed by Adam Shand that renames spring to shitsville and creates a new season of spring 1 and 2 from August and December. The proposal has been popular, with several hundred retweets, a spin-off website, and t-shirt sales.
To establish an evidence base for future decisions about renaming the seasons, we used Wellington and Auckland weather data from the National Insitute for Water and Atmospheric Research to assess whether the conventional seasons or these new seasons better described observed weather patterns.
You can read a summary report (suitable for non-statisticians) about our results.
If you want more, please visit our github repository where you will find the full (much more technical) report, our data and our code.
Andrea Knox counterbalance.co.nz
Jordan Monk jmonk217@gmail.com
This was our group project for the Victoria University of Wellington course: STAT394 Multivariate Statistics, completed in Trimester 2, 2022. We would like to thank Professor Alejandro Frery for guidance on the approach and methods, Lewis Wyatt-Watson for contributions to the early stages of the project and Johanna Knox for review of the summary report.
Evidence is never perfect and results can be interpreted in different ways. We’d be happy to hear your comments and suggestions for improvements.