Drought caused by bumblebee

One of the things I do is keep an eye on the fire weather data - a series of very useful statistics for predicting the behaviour of wildfires - based on things like recent rainfall, humidity, wind speed, how dry the grass is, how dry the earth is, etc. I was noting with some concern that our weather station at Titahi Bay wasn't receiving much rainfall at all, and the drought code was rising fast - recording similar levels to Northland, which is officially in drought. And then at the end of March the number dropped overnight back to a level more consistent with the rest of the region, and we hadn't had enough rain to cause that kind of drop, so I asked about it.

Turns out a dead bumblebee had gotten stuck in the gauge, so it wasn't working properly. So, bumblebee removed, drought averted!