Weather in Gisborne in March

Prime time. March is about as good as Gisborne gets. Highs average 22.4 °C, lows 15 °C, and rain falls on 10 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

March ranks 4 of 12 in Gisborne: past the worst of the year but short of January, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 10 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average March reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest March day reached 30.7 °C and the coldest night fell to 8.4 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 119 mm — roughly 137% of the month's rain in one day.

March is moderately variable: 7 mm in the driest year against 227 mm in the wettest, around an average of 87 mm. Roughly two Marchs in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 13.1 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 75%, high enough to notice on the warm days without dominating them.

How March sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 1.9 °C cooler than February, with April dropping another 2.7 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in March

12.4 hours of daylight, losing 1.3 hours across the month. That is between Gisborne's extremes of 14.8 and 9.5 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

Sea temperature

The sea sits at about 19.9 °C in March — swimmable, but it takes a moment to commit. This is the warmest the water gets all year.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

March in Gisborne versus nearby

If Gisborne is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Taupo is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days. Tauranga is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day more rain.

So: March is effectively as good as it gets here — 2 points behind January, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Gisborne

See all twelve months in Gisborne, or where else to go in March.