Given another sixteen hours, May’s report would have been significantly rosier.

Instead, most of May’s measures were left hanging on the desperate end of below normal. The latter half of the month did at least see a climb to 70% of May’s average rainfall. It wasn’t accompanied by any significant rise in the month’s river levels and it wasn’t sufficient to hoist soil moisture far from the floor it’s adhered to for quite some time. Groundwater levels continued in red territory as they did the previous month.

Things have since improved but that’s a story for another month, assuming the cracking start to June isn’t all flash in the pan. While May rainfall was a whisker away from being a good news story, air quality shaved perilously close to being a bad news story.

We avoided a PM10 exceedance in Hastings with an uncomfortable squirm and it’s one measure where less is definitely more.

For the full rundown find the State of the Environment Report here

What can you find in the full report? Info and stats for this month include:

• Rainfall
• Temperatures
• River Flows
• Groundwater & Soil Moisture
• Air Quality
• The Longer Forecast and outlook

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