J07

But the difference is this is the Subtropical jet, whereas the only jet that directly affects the British Isles is the Polar.

I think it has an over-rated climate. Be careful of where you look though because the inner suburbs are a fair bit hotter. The sunshine hours are much more than the UK, around 2800 I think (Similar to Southern Spain) whereas London gets 1500. Sydneys warm season is very long and maybe that gives a good impression if you live there a long time. It´s pretty warm September to May. In summer, dewpoints are always 18-23C in the middle of the day if the max is 27C. If the dewpoints are much lower its because they are getting W or NW flows with maxima of 35C or above. I honestly think the whole east coast of Australia is over-rated for climate. It´s variable and at any time of year they can get depresions that make a real mess of sea conditions, hence messing up your beach holiday. It is pretty sunny and warm for much of the year though. "Beautiful one day, perfect the next" is generally a bit of a tall story. It can easily be horrendous one day and even worse the next (when they get persistent strong on shore flows). Southern and Western Australia though is very good, if you like guaranteed dry, warm seasons and winters that are more like September/October in the UK. One thing to bear in mind is the sun in Australia is much stronger than anywhere in Europe, and indeed most of the northern Hemisphere. So on a 26C day if you´re out in the sun it will feel as hot as the fiery pits of hell, whereas in Europe is would merely be a warm day.

Hahaha. Sydney is really not that much of a dry place. They have no guaranteed dry season unlike places such as western Australia, California, Mediterranean. Sydneysiders sure as heck see rain. Sometimes buckets and buckets of it for several days...and it can be in summer, winter, autumn or spring.

Still there are environmental problems. Effluent in rivers. 1080. And Hydro is not that great for the pre-existing environment....and when you have to spill the Lakes due to excessive rain......not good for downstream valleys.

Not sure how long the stations have been there but it's at least 15 years. I wouldn't say it's "common" but it's also not all that unusual. The Cropp River gauge once had 17,000 mm of rain in a calendar year, and 3000 mm in a calendar month. As for hydro generation - 52% of NZ's electricity comes from hydroelectricity. There is of course no nuclear generation allowed, and 70% of the total energy comes from renewable sources.

Does the water up there taste like whisky?

Britain as a whole is not very good at dealing with the sort of dry spells that many other countries take in their stride. This is not surprising, because we are accustomed to fairly reliable year-round rainfall. The seasonal variation for much of the country is small, if it exists at all. Two weeks without rain anywhere would be notable, and you start getting "we need the rain" into the public conscious. It doesn't help that the most densely populated part of the nation is water-stressed and there is a lack of mountains and significant river systems. There are plenty of places in the world where it does not rain for about 4 months of the year, and yet they produce enormous amounts of food (eg California's Central Valley). These Mediterranean climates also have much higher evaporation of soil moisture due to higher temperatures, more sunshine, and stronger sunshine. Of course, they have adapted to their climate and have irrigation in place to get them through. For the UK, we are not prepared for this and there is inevitably a strong reaction to dry spells. And I think it's fair to say "real or perceived"!

Almost everyone on this forum seems to think that anywhere that is hotter than the UK has air conditioning. That's pretty naive.

For some perspective on London's "stifling" heat. A few days ago, Darwin fell below 20C for the first time since last August.

Roger Brugge's page certainly shows a lot of sub 10mm rainfalls for this month so far (also a fair few in the 20-40mm range). I think it's pretty difficult for consistent showery weather to persist over the Mediterranean during summer. They have their summer minimum of rainfall (nothing at all in some places), whereas much of Britain has no real seasonal variation of rain. So based on this, it would be surprising for the Med to not dry up soon, but as for Britain- who knows?

That's essentially true for every country in the world.

Even once you pass the solstice, you lose daylight pretty slowly (except northern areas) and it's not really noticeable for a fair while. (That should be consolation!)

94P was classified a ST2.5 using the Poteat Subtropical technique a few days ago. (Basically the same as Dvorak, but for subtropical cyclones). ST2.5 corresponds to DT2.5, which has a core of winds 35-40kts, aka a tropical cyclone. Within the next 24 hours it will complete its transition to an extratropical cyclone, as cold air from near Australia pushes up its western flank. Where did it come from in the first place? There was a pre-existing trough in the Coral Sea, about 25-30S. A weakening front transported this eastwards, where it sat stationary northwest of the North Island, deepening quite nicely. It developed some good banding over time. SSTs are approximately 23C there. Subtropical cyclones are not too uncommon in such waters during autumn. They don't always form as this one did, sometimes a tropical cyclone will fail to make ET transition and instead become subtropical, before finally moving off to the south and developing the standard ET features of a fairly clear warm and cold front set.

I'd go along with that. Would make Britain a very interesting place to live, weatherwise! Add in the previous "get some mountains" suggestion and you'd have a great combination. Something like the Pennines, but triple the height and a bit longer. Would make Britains weather far more interesting and diverse, and you'd get some great phenomena that are currently rare/unheard of like frequent and major barrier jets, significant foehn winds, massive rain in the west. Hopefully, terraforming will make this possible in the future :lol:

Again, almost an identical situation, almost exactly a year later! Cropp River had 1250 mm of rain in 5 days.

The country had a cold, wet January. But this was followed by a warm, dry and sunny February; a warm, dry and sunny March....and a warm, dry and sunny April. Unless you live on the West Coast, in which case it was atrociously wet! Full April Summary is here: http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/103600/Climate_summary_April2010_FINAL.pdf A few interesting facts! The driest place was Culverden with 5 mm of monthly rain. The wettest was Milford Sound township with...... 1400 mm of rain. These two towns are on the same island! Another great contrast is between Culverden, with its total monthly rain of 5 mm, and the Cropp River raingauge which is about 150 km west, and managed 1300 mm of rain in one 5 day period! In terms of temperatures, Waipara in the final few days of the month had an overnight low of 19C. Darfield reached 29C earlier in the month. The lowest temperature was -3C. A number of locations came out with mean monthly maxima in the low 20s. Sunny for plenty of places, with almost 230 hours in Gisborne. Good for ripening the last of the grapes. Back to the rain....another illustration of the great contrast is between Alexandra and Milford Sound. These two towns are a mere 60 miles apart, yet Milford Sound in a typical year receives about 20 times as much rain as Alexandra. In April this year, both towns had a wet month. But the difference in standards is notable. Alexandras 4th wettest April on record, with a mere 47 mm of rain, whilst Milford Sound had its 2nd wettest April on record with that enormous 1424 mm of rain - 30 times more! Dear friendly Mods! Might be worth deleting the two identical topics, thought my Chrome had frozen on me, looks like it was still accepting clicks....sorry.... Here's a graph following the temperatures at Christchurch last month....

Isn't April normally a fairly dry month for much of the UK? (Or am I thinking of May?).

Well 38C is not very common, and it definitely did not happen where I live! (It was in a place called Culverden on the South Island, and it happened twice last summer). This summer somewhere (Cheviot, which is quite close to Culverden) hit 36C. The same summer saw another location (Lumsden, near Invercargill) record a low of -3.5C! I think that's a pretty good range for just one island, in just one season!

...and the autumn equinox has passed here. :-( Clear sky UV index currently 6, will be dropping fast over the next few weeks....along with the rapid loss of daylight. Boo!

Sunshine hours in themselves don't "talk to people", but if you can give them context then they can. eg. if you can turn it into a % of possible sun received. In the UK it's always below 50% everywhere, so you could say that Edinburgh receives about 30% of its possible sunshine annual sunshine. Or, "it's not sunny more often than it is sunny"! But that's not a very positive outlook! Average annual sunshine hours are 1379. You could put it into context by comparing with cities worldwide? That way you can make "average stats" talk to "normal" people!

Yes, it seems a few people missed the point about it being in unbroken sunshine. I would counter it by saying that the sun in March is nowhere near as strong as people like to pretend it is. Obviously compared to the last few months it is "strong", but in its own terms it's pretty darn weak. I mean the UV index (which is not a bad measure of sun strength) is 1 under clear skies. 1. Come on, please, this does not warrant the now traditional "strong March sunshine" theory.

Must admit I'm a real sucker for sunshine. I need the stuff. The temperature can almost do what it likes...if I've got sun it keeps me in a good mood- especially true in winter. Where I live we average about 100 hours a month in the dullest month (either June or July), and that's just not quite enough for me. ~5 hours a day in winter makes a real difference to wellbeing, and in Europe I think you need to hit the Mediterranean to get that. I've had a winter month over here that exceeded 200 hours of sunshine (August 2007), and that was brilliant. Sunshine also impacts upon peoples perception of summertime...naturally. January here was the 2nd dullest in recorded history. We had 180 hours of sunshine, which was poor for us (average is about 250), but that would not be all that unusual for a summer month in the UK. The saving grace of dull months is that we are in the southern hemisphere and coastal, which is a combination that can't really be bettered for quality of light. Even if we fall short on the numbers game, it's still very intense light that we do receive.

There is a station with Synop number 01389 at Rena-Haugedalen. The last 7 days of June 2009 were warm there, with maximum temperatures from 27C to 31C. Nothing at all close to 55C. But a thermometer in 31C heat corrupted by sun and radiation from buildings could get to 55C. Probably not under "proper exposure". "Nearer 60C" would imply world record temperatures for days on end. Of course you can argue that "proper exposure" is not all that relevant for people if there's no actual shade available.

In the end it never hit NZ as a "potent extratropical storm". Just played its part in dragging high dewpoint air over the country (20C-23C dewpoints across the north), then merged with a cold front that swept up from the southwest.

Looking at the climate statistics for Scott Base and McMurdo (both at 77S), they both sound like awfully cold climates even for cold lovers. The mean max in January (summer) is -2C! McMurdo is apparently the windier place. Antarctica is also the windiest, driest and most mountainous continent in the world. It's very interesting in those regards but very inhospitable. Despite that, Scott Base has about the same annual sunshine as London.