‘Like a seagull in a stiff breeze’: what it’s like flying into Wellington, the world’s windiest city
Anyone who has frequently landed in New Zealand’s capital has a hair-raising story to tell, and this year’s ‘super’ El Niño could only intensify the winds It had been a smooth late-July flight from Auckland, until the plane started its descent into Wellington. Then the bumps and swaying began. “The more we went down, the rockier it got,” says Laura, a Wellington resident who wished to give her first name only. “There
Open original article- Ledger record
- #811
- First seen
- 20 Aug 2026, 00:47 UTC
- Last checked
- 21 Aug 2026, 23:20 UTC
- Version history
- 1 version
- Current fingerprint
115caa585e60...91758a
Publisher layer
Recorded article metadata
- Publisher
- The Guardian
- Country
- England / United Kingdom
- Source published
- 20 Aug 2026, 00:19 UTC
- Source updated
- No update timestamp supplied
- Byline
- Eva Corlett in Wellington
- Section
- New Zealand
Anyone who has frequently landed in New Zealand’s capital has a hair-raising story to tell, and this year’s ‘super’ El Niño could only intensify the winds It had been a smooth late-July flight from Auckland, until the plane started its descent into Wellington. Then the bumps and swaying began. “The more we went down, the rockier it got,” says Laura, a Wellington resident who wished to give her first name only. “There
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Observed version timeline
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1
‘Like a seagull in a stiff breeze’: what it’s like flying into Wellington, the world’s windiest city
Anyone who has frequently landed in New Zealand’s capital has a hair-raising story to tell, and this year’s ‘super’ El Niño could only intensify the winds It had been a smooth late-July flight from Auckland, until the plane started its descent into Wellington. Then the bumps and swaying began. “The more we went down, the rockier it got,” says Laura, a Wellington resident who wished to give her first name only. “There
Changed fieldstitlebylinedescriptionTextcontentTextsourcePublishedAtsourceUpdatedAtsectionimageUrltags- Version SHA-256
115caa585e60...91758a- Capture SHA-256
c4e8d9dedc20...2f5457
Interpretation layer
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Publisher categories are copied from source metadata. Machine signals report observable wording or format and do not determine truth, intent, ethics, or wrongdoing.
- machine content-type Reported news observable-rules-v1 / 70% rule confidence
- publisher category Air transport rss-category
- publisher category Asia Pacific rss-category
- publisher category El Niño southern oscillation rss-category
- publisher category New Zealand rss-category
- publisher category Wellington rss-category
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Evidence layer
Capture provenance
- Capture ID
- #269
- Observed
- 20 Aug 2026, 00:47 UTC
- HTTP result
- 200 / parsed
- Raw payload
- 461,223 bytes, private gzip evidence
- Collector
- news-ledger/0.1
- Public boundary
- metadata and excerpt