Wellington's most famous weather claim, put on trial.
"You can't beat Wellington on a good day." Wellington's most famous weather saying. But how often is it actually true?
Every day, real weather data for Wellington is fetched and checked against three conditions. If all three pass, it's a good day. If not, well. Wellington.
Wellington has six seasons, not four, at least according to the locals. The app uses seasonal temperature thresholds based on Adam Shand's Shitsville calendar , calibrated against six years of actual Wellington weather data. Read the full story behind the rule change on the blog .
| Season | Months | Min temp | Max wind | Max rain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summer | Jan, Feb, Mar | 19°C | 30 km/h | 0 mm |
| Autumn | Apr, May, Jun | 16°C | 30 km/h | 0 mm |
| Winter | Jul, Aug | 13°C | 30 km/h | 0 mm |
| Spring 1 | Sep | 14°C | 30 km/h | 0 mm |
| Shitsville | Oct, Nov | 16°C | 30 km/h | 0 mm |
| Spring 2 | Dec | 18°C | 30 km/h | 0 mm |
The wind and rain thresholds are the same year-round. Rain is rain. And 30 km/h is genuinely light wind for Wellington: the old 20 km/h threshold applied to only 12% of all days across six years of data.
Some months naturally produce very few good days under these rules, and the rules don't try to paper over that. June averages zero. Shitsville (October and November) produces good days about 6% of the time. That's not the app being harsh. That's Wellington being Wellington.
This site has a Fediverse account and posts a note whenever it's a good day, nothing more, nothing less. Search for the handle below in Mastodon (or any other ActivityPub-compatible app) and hit follow.
@CanYouBeat@canyoubeatwellington.radomski.co.nz
Got someone who needs convincing you can't beat Wellington on a good day, or even a bad one? Send them here.
Built by Patrick Radomski , with some AI help. The whole build (and rebuild) story is on the blog . Say hi on Mastodon .