J07

Progression of southeasterly gradually bringing in moisture. 5:30PM: 32/06 - Southeast 19km/h gusting 30km/h 7PM: 31/10 - Southeast 25km/h gusting 35km/h 8PM: 29/11 - Southeast 33km/h gusting 50km/h

Saw a good example today (which has happened the last 3 evenings, and will happen tomorrow evening also). 30km/h gusts are not very high, but considering this is a fairly sheltered inland land-site and the pressure gradient is apparently minimal....it is a fair bit. It's probably more relevant for boaties on the Lakes. A whole day of light winds would go by, and then quite suddenly they would get hit by a 15 knot (possibly 20 knot) southeast wind in the evening. That can be quite significant. Anyway, the place in question is in the inland south of the South Island, at about 45S. As you can see from the analysis, there is not much in the way of synoptic scale pressure gradient. However, due to heating throughout the day, a small scale heat low forms inland. Coastal locations are pegged to around 20C by some low cloud and northeast sea breezes. Inland, this is not a problem and by late morning temperatures have reached 27C-29C, and continue to rise during the afternoon with a heat low forming. The inflow to this heat low reaches inland locations from about 4PM-6PM, and is fairly sudden, and quite a change from earlier in the day. It can drop temperatures by about 3C, and rise dewpoints by about 7C. Compared to how quickly things change in these places with actual airmass changes (eg 10C-15C in an hour during summertime southerly changes) this is quite small - but it's interesting because there are no synoptic features causing it. eg at 7PM, the Wanaka site is at 31C with humidity up to 25%, a southeast at 25km/h, gusting to 35km/h.

Nothing special here. North of Auckland I think they have issues with humidity and hence the various fungal blights, also fruit fly. East coast of Australia also have issues. I think for northern NSW/ southern QLD tomatoes are a shoulder season crop, and north of Brisbane are more like a winter crop. It's a poor season here for tomatoes. Because the weather has either been excellent (like the 27C on Saturday, with no wind and lots of sun) or terrible (like the 15C max on Sunday, with rain and 52 knot southerlies!) it's been difficult for plants to settle in. As a result, I still only have green tomatoes. Last year I was about a week away from harvesting the first ones at this point.

Quasi stationary is the proper name for stationary fronts, which are rarely entirely stationary! Anyway....goodbye Neville! Though he may be back!

This sounds a bit tourist-brochurey! "Summers last from about mid March to November. " The average high in March is 11C, and in November 8C. Hardly summer. In October and April it's 16C, which is kind of cool for summer also! "At any time in this period it can be 25C and anytime from June to the end of September it can be 30-35C. In mid summer it can get up to 40C " If you go by absolute records then yes. Record March temperature is 25C, record temperature in any month is 41C. But then this is the same as the UK. You could say "In British summers it can get up to 38.5C!", and not be wrong! "Temps down to -20C occur most winters in Budapest, down to -30 in the countryside." As above. Record low is -21C. So is it really accurate to say that in most winters it falls to -20C? I'll grant you the sunshine though. Annual totals are about 2000, which would be very good for the UK but poor for the Mediterranean Basin (see, for example, Marseille and Almeria). The sunshine looks highly concentrated into the summer months, averaging 10 hours a day in July, but winter is very dull by comparison. Are you sure you did not just visit during an exceptionally hot period? Everything I've read and heard suggests that Hungary quite easily has 4 seasons, which are very distinct, much more so than the UK, and so to claim it only has 2 seasons seems a bit disingenuous! The "2 seasons" claim is only really valid for tropical and subtropical regions.

http://weather.noble.gen.nz/lunarcy.php http://www.sillybeliefs.com/ring.html http://thesecondsight.blogspot.com/2006/08/true-lunatic.html http://www.limestonehills.co.nz/Down%20On%20The%20Farm/Topics/Ringworld.html Ken Ring's method is to print a year full of synoptic charts that are were valid for x years and y days in the past. He changes x and y from year to year. He gets found out when he gets sloppy and forgets to Tipex out the names of tropical cyclones on his charts, which makes it relatively easy to go back in time and find out what x and y are.

The sharp edge seems to imply a jet streak is involved. At first I thought it might be a warm conveyor, although it's not a particularly classically broad example of it. It probably marks an area of good warm advection through the atmosphere. You could most likely draw a frontal boundary along the western edge of it at some level, and maybe at the surface too. Almost certainly an upper cold front though. The cloud does not look too thick, and given the warm air surging northwards through that area, I think the low countries would have had a warm day (or potentially, anywhere in the lee of the Alps).

Fine by me....I'm fed up with the incessant gales here!

Just a squint at this suggests that the feature would bring snow to inland areas. First they've drawn occluded fronts, so they are implying no surface change of air mass. Given the lack of troughing in the surface pressure field it looks like a mid-level feature anyway. The air at the surface will be very cold. So the snow falling at mid-levels from this feature will just be falling into left-over cold air from the current cold spell, which will lead to snow likely at sea level. This effect is particularly pronounced in any basin type areas inland. Happens over here all the time in winter. There would need to be a strong push of mild air to flush out the cold stuff from valleys and basins, otherwise snow looks the most likely precipitation type (or, depending on how the temperature profile pans out, freezing rain).

On a standard night (cool, clear, no deep advection), coldest temperatures would be about 30 minutes after sunrise. This is because the coldest air has pooled at the surface during the overnight cooling period (say it can be 3C or 4C lower than the 1.5m temperature, hence why you get ground frosts when there is no air frost), and the rising of the sun destabilises this lowest wedge of air, and allows some mixing to take place (previously the stability profile would prevent this). The mixing allows the coldest surface air to influence the 1.5m temperature.

I think these are pretty impressive temperatures for a coastal town! Sunny here with a high of 21C. Meanwhile "the other Eastbourne" saw 23C (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IWELLING17).

All your weather sounds wonderful. I would gladly swap it. Here it is depressing when much of the country reaches the high 20s (Hastings to 33C), with heaps of sunshine, and here is is drizzly and 19C all bloody day with northerly gales, gusting 130 km/h in exposed parts of the city. Rubbish. Give me a hoarfrost.

It's not that great everwhere. They built the capital in the dumbest place for a city :x There was a 17C difference between us and Blenheim this evening (which is only 30 miles away), and a difference in wind gusts of 20 knots.

Blenheim also reached 34C later in the evening, and Christchurch 32C. Tomorrow is going to be a big change for these guys!

Happy New Years. Typical El Nino summer day in Wellington, sunny with a high of 18C in the city and northerly winds gusting to 45 knots. Nationwide high was 34C in Timaru today with gusty northwest winds and very low humidity.

Sea clutter is another radar issue, but I assume the MetO filter it out.

A few quick "answers".... Yes, they get frontal rainfall in summer. They are not on the western edge of a continent, therefore do not have Mediterranean climates (meaning dry summers and wet winters). Rainfall is reasonably evenly spread over the year. Their frontal rainfall may well turn out to be more convective though (organised on the cold front). Everywhere in the world outside the tropics gets effected by "warm sectors". These are nothing special or exotic, just the area behind a warm front and ahead of a cold front. Their summers are sunnier. Some places in that area (eg NYC) average up to 10 hours of sunshine a day in the summer months. Most places in the UK average 6-7 hours of sunshine in high summer. As for "settled", perhaps not in general. It would vary by the year. If you want guaranteed settled, dry summers you really have to go to Mediterranean climates (eg the Med itself, California, Western Australia, parts of south Australia, western South America. Basically anywhere that exists on the cold side of the main permanent areas of high pressure in the world (being the Azores High, the North Pacific High, the South Pacific High, the Indian Ocean High - of all these, the Pacific Highs are typically the strongest and most dominant). Yes they can be milder in winter than the UK, and also colder. And yes they are capable of bigger day-to-day changes than the UK.

I think last years Melbourne Feb heatwave peaked on a weekend! And in November Adelaide's heatwave was pretty much on-going for 10 days. NZ is a good place to be this Christmas. Dunedin Airport reached 32C at 6PM. So much for the "Scottish City". It is basically fine and sunny everywhere. UV index ranges from 11 in the South to 14 in the North. (Both are "Extreme") That is what is predicted anyway. We will see tomorrow what was actually recorded! Meanwhile, Sydney had a high of 21C, rain and gusty southerly winds. Hardly a day to spend on the beach!

Amazing that the mods see fit to delete my post (which you quoted), but not yours? Hello mods...I am merely pointing out something quite useful and *relevant* to "model output"!

It does go below 72 hours. 3 hourly time steps from 00 out to I think 72, and then 6 hourly beyond that. It's fine for forecasting in short term.

One of those stations had 400 mm yesterday.

But any showers that do occur with warmish sea temps would likely have a little more vigour to them and push the snow level down. In between the showers, yes the air may be a little warmer than it would be with cooler sea temps.

I think there's something for everyone anywhere! I quite like the longest days of the year to be the driest and sunniest. So for me that rules out the tropics, and means that Mediterranean climates would be most suitable. Parts of California have a great climate for this, and of course parts of the Med. Western Australia is another. I do love snow...but too much of it would get annoying. Provided there are nearby mountains I am generally OK. But, yes I do crave waking up to lying snow in the morning- something which I never get since leaving the UK! I think a lot of NZ rain is frontal rather than convective. Although frequently they combine, when talking about a southerly change pushing up the east coast. In winter, most of the rain would be "frontal", but in summer the front is probably very weak and the precip is caused by convection and convergence. The longer daylight hours in winter are nice, compared to what I had growing up. But still in June it feels kind of dark at times....but maybe that's because friends back home are enjoying some much daylight! The best place for storms in NZ is, tediously, the West Coast. You would have to endure average rainfalls of about 2000mm in populated places (it's even worse than that inland) just to get a dozen or so storms a year! If you want the combination of summer heat, sunshine hours, winter snow and occasional storms- I think your best bet would be Lake Tekapo. From memory, average highs are 23C in summer and a few days over 30C. In winter you get some truly stunning sunny days with hard frost. Ice days are very rare though. Winter snow is not common, but it happens. You can get storms from spillover on the west coast, and maybe some from convergence. You will get dramatic temperature changes as foehn winds transition to cold southwesterlies. Temps are knocked back a bit by the altitude (800m). Ground frosts per year: 150 Sunshine hours per year: 2200 Average temps in coldest month: Lows of -3C, highs of 6C Days with 1mm+ rain: 78 (21%) The bonus of course is unbelievable scenery. If you wanted milder winters, even more sunshine, golden beaches and snow capped mountains within 90 minutes then Nelson would be your bet. For my money, the best place to live in New Zealand and one of the best places in the world I've ever visited.

We seem to be settling into something of a typical summer pattern, albeit El Nino. So the subtropical ridge is a few degrees further north than normal. Last week's unusual pattern: a ridge to the south of the South Island (statistically this is far more common in winter) and a warm conveyor of subtropical air pouring onto the North Island. It lasted quite a while, keeping things cold down south and warm and humid up north. Dewpoints of 20C became commonplace, but despite this there was little rain to ease the Northland drought...apart from the severe thunderstorms which delivered good falls to lucky spots. Now the pattern has gone "back to normal". High persists in the north Tasman Sea (subtropical ridge), keeping a northwest flow over the north of the NI. This generally keeps things settled and pleasant up there. Reasonable humidity but way down on recent times due to the lack of a long fetch (last week the air was coming from inside the tropics, near New Caledonia). Whangarei looks to get 5 or so days of dry weather, highs of around 25C and lows 15C. Not much wind and no rain. Sounds perfect to me for summertime...but farmers won't like it. Fronts will move up the country delivering bursts of northwest winds and a few showers. High 20s in the east when the NWers peak, maybe higher if we get a fetch from Australia. The fronts will probably do their typical summertime act of falling apart as they reach the North Island.

I think you have a difficult job making something that works and keeps everyone happy. Yes, it is tedious going through the one line posts. The simple solution is to use the ignore button, but that means one-line posters will not get the chance to learn and improve. Mods can only do so much, even posting politely along the lines of "no one line posts please" does not work too well because they still happen anyway! And it's too time consuming to shift all the posts...and inevitably you end up with people then posting one line questions "what happened to my post, lol?". A moderator's task is thankless! Most people know, or learn, to gravitate towards reading the posts of "experienced" members ahead of most others. This happens even if they have to wade through a fair bit of poor quality posting. However, the danger of reserving a topic just for certain people might lead to elitism, as others have mentioned. Just from casual reading it is true that there is something of a "clique" here, but it's nowhere near as bad as other forums and it's generally based upon high quality posting and analysis (I think "cliques" are inevitable in human interaction so don't take this as a personal attack). I would be careful though about considering "experience" as something inherently worthy. Having an account on netweather for 5 years and "model watching" does not necessarily imply strong meteorological knowledge. No one would ever guess it by my posts but I am a meteorologist, and I think there is a lot lot more to meteorology than model watching. Despite these risks, I favour the idea of having a "advanced/experienced" topic, where the contributors are voted in by the general populace of the forum. I think this would be an excellent way to both get an overview of the situation and in depth analysis in the same thread. Disclaimer though.....my conclusion is biased towards my preference for coming here to read, rather than contribute, and because I don't have a strong preference for a particular sort of weather when it's on the other side of the world. I just like to keep up with the general and technical aspects of what is going on, and the solution above favours my style. I would love to log on during a severe cold snap (or the run up) and just see a thread full of JH, TWS, nick sussex, Nick F, GP, Steve Murr, Brickfielder etc etc etc. To reiterate, it would be a great way to both get an overview of the way things are going and get the analysis....all in one easy-to-navigate place. Good luck with whatever route you take.