Lower Hutt Camera Yields a Two-Decade Timelapse of Cloud

Daniel Okafor

A south-facing weather camera in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, has recorded a 640 × 480 image at noon every day since June 24, 2000. Recoverable frames from 2006 onward underpin a roughly 20-year timelapse published by Peter McGavin.

Trevor McGavin installed the camera in the late 1990s to display local weather conditions on his website. Peter’s sequence plays one low-resolution photograph each day at 25 frames per second, so every second of screen time covers 25 days. The finished video functions as an expanded contact sheet, bringing the roofline, surrounding trees and weather into a single time-based document.

That context places the work in web-based environmental photography: continuity and repetition carry its argument. No museum, curator, exhibition, commission or formal series title is named, and the timelapse has reached its audience through publication and online explanation rather than a gallery apparatus.

How was the archive built?

The sequence came from a 1990s-era StarDot Technologies WinCam Live camera connected through a serial RS232 interface. Despite decades of exposure to the elements, that camera remains operating in 2026. Its fixed position and low resolution are not incidental limitations; they determine how the archive can be read, one unvarying noon view at a time.

The continuity has a hole. McGavin explains on YouTube that he has been “unable to recover any saved images from before 2006,” so the timelapse covers approximately 20 years rather than the camera’s entire lifespan. The lost early files should temper any claim that the video preserves everything the instrument saw.

Why do the skies look persistently cloudy?

Some viewers question why the skies appear so consistently overcast. McGavin says the footage has been processed to reduce flicker and restore more natural colours, and he identifies four compounding causes:

• The deflickering process blends cloudy frames with sunny ones.
• Playback at 25 frames per second makes individual weather changes difficult to distinguish.
• The ageing CCD sensor has gradually lost sensitivity to blue light, making clear skies look grey.
• Dirt accumulating inside the lens adds a hazy cast.

McGavin says these effects become more pronounced toward the end of the video. He puts Lower Hutt’s annual average at “more than 2,000 hours of bright sunshine annually,” and cites the sharp shadows visible throughout the footage as evidence of sunny conditions. The explanation is visually testable, although no independent sunshine record is supplied.

What seasonal and local clues survive?

The sequence also records the Southern Hemisphere’s seasonal changes, which run at opposite times of year to those in the Northern Hemisphere. The black cylinders visible on the roof are rain gauges.

In the background, native New Zealand trees such as totara and pohutukawa retain their leaves throughout the year, making changes in sky and light more legible than changes in foliage.

Snow provides the sharpest timestamp. McGavin says the only snow to settle on the ground during the 20-year period fell on the afternoon of August 15, 2011, and had disappeared by the following morning. In a region where snow is particularly rare, that brief event gives the otherwise continuous sequence a precise interruption.

What happens to the archive next?

The public path so far remains small: Peter’s published timelapse and Trevor’s YouTube explanation. No acquiring institution is named, and no plan for cataloguing, conserving the files or presenting the work in a gallery is stated. That leaves daily recording and file preservation as the project’s practical stakes.

The camera’s continued operation in 2026 points to the next concrete development: more daily frames extending the sequence. That will lengthen an already two-decade record, though the missing pre-2006 files and the absence of a named institutional home leave two obvious questions unanswered.