May weather runs hot and cold 

If you felt like May was a month of extreme temperatures with the mercury bobbing up and down you're not wrong.

NIWA figures released on Friday morning show record highs and lows, extreme rain and early snowfall.

Middlemarch in Otago scored the record low of the month with a chilly -9.6 degrees Celsius.

Palmerston North had the highest temperature of 25.6 degrees.

Northland, Auckland, Rotorua and Taupo also broke records, with mean temperatures almost two degrees above normal.

The big dry in Hawkes Bay and Marlborough was not helped by 50 percent less rain than normal.

Last Tuesday's downpour that lifted cars off their wheels in Leigh, north of Auckland, smashed the all-time New Zealand record for one hours rain with a remarkable 109mm falling in 60 minutes.

There could me more to come with the Met Service saying New Zealand is moving away from the mild winters of the past few years.

It predicts this winter will be more like those of the mid 1990s - colder, longer and more variable.

Met Service spokesman Bob McDavitt says early snowfalls in the South Island last month suggest the relatively gentle winters of the past few years are on their way out.