J07
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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.
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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
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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.
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I find it really odd imagining picking Tomatoes in April. Do you get any super nasty bugs down there, running riot in the garden or are they pretty much the same as we have?
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.
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Quasi stationary is the proper name for stationary fronts, which are rarely entirely stationary!
Anyway....goodbye Neville! Though he may be back!
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I know this thread is ancient but I'm going to throw Hungary's hat in the ring, the homeland of my delightful missus. Compared to us, Hungary only really has 2 seasons, Summer & Winter.
Summers last from about mid March to November. 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 and throughout this extended summer it is sunny pretty much all the time except for in the evenings when large thunderstorms are common. I was there for a week in September when the weather was the equivalent to what you'd expect on a beach holiday in a Mediterranean country, I'm not sure if I actually saw a cloud and it caused me physical pain to get on the plane to come home. Also, everybody's gardens are filled with fruit producing tree's, which when I was there were so loaded I was suprised they could stand up. The country is notable for its fine wines and I saw many vines full to almost bursting point in the gardens of Budapest. In Budapest there are many outdoor restaurants and nightclubs that most of the population take advantage of at this time of year.
Winter is a pretty short lived affair but tends to be what we would class as very cold. Temps down to -20C occur most winters in Budapest, down to -30 in the countryside. It doesn't snow often or in enormous quantities but what does fall tends to stick around for a week or two at a time at least and on occasions can lie on the ground for most of the winter. High pressure and persistant fog causing severly suppressed day time maxima are fairly common, and the Danube often contains floating ice. There are outdoor markets and Ice Rinks but Hungarians are very much warm blooded summer loving people and compared to the fun loving atmosphere of summer it is almost like people go into hibernation in winter. People tend to hole up in their homes with the heating cranked up to ridiculous levels and only ever venture out in the company of an enormous coat and hat.
Little rain, loads of sunshine, long, hot summers and cold winters. Pretty good I think you'll agree
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.
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People love to knock Ken Ring also, but there are few if any detailed validation studies available for his actual forecasts; I have tried to assemble some and subject them to validation, my preliminary findings on that suggested that he wasn't doing too badly. His methodology is founded on some of the same principles as mine, but he openly calls it astrology, I would say partly as a marketing tool (if you're going to get labelled an astrologer, might as well appeal to that section of the public who find astrology intriguing). I know what astrology is supposed to be, and it has nothing to do with the processes at work in magnetic fields and gravitational systems. I don't believe in astrology and I don't think this work is astrological in any way. Surely nobody thinks that if they consult the tide tables in the newspaper, they are getting astrological advice.
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.
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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).
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J07 - Fancy swapping countries mate?
Fine by me....I'm fed up with the incessant gales here!
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Wrong chart, he was talking about the 2nd chart he posted for Sunday
This is the chart he and I were referring to
I do not think I need to highlight the 528 dam for you.
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).
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The lowest temperatures are normally around 6 ish as the sun begins to move up. I don't quite understand the reason for this but I guess it could have something to do with air tending to dry further with some slight radiation energy.
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.
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-5.2 DgC (lowest last night -5.8 DgC)
1009.8 mb falling 0.4 mb/hr
Wind 0.0 mph gusting 5.4 mph max NW
Windchill -5.2 DgC (lowest last night -8.7 DgC)
DP -6.8 DgC (lowest last night -7.8 DgC)
Humidity 88%
No precipitation last 24 hours
Cloud base 691 ft
Colder in coastal Eastbourne than it is in the usually colder Burgess Hill. Another cracking sunrise with lots of potential for today!
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).
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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.
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I'd kill to live in New Zealand right now...
Currently -0.5c with a frost.
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.
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Blenheim also reached 34C later in the evening, and Christchurch 32C.
Tomorrow is going to be a big change for these guys!
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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.
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Sea clutter is another radar issue, but I assume the MetO filter it out.
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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.
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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!
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Agreed J07 - folks do your research before hammering the ECM model -
25 November 2009 ECMWF has pioneered a system to predict forecast confidence. This system, operational at ECMWF since 1992, is the Ensemble Prediction System (EPS). A new leaflet on EPS has been published on the ECMWF web.
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"!
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Just a reminder, there is a reason why ECM does not go below 72hrs, it is a medium range forecasting model used for trend forecasting, not specifics like will it snow.!
Due to this is does not forecast SW for small lows very well, in the north, it was never designed to. (although for some reason it is very good at picking up Hurricanes forming).
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.
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One of those stations had 400 mm yesterday.
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If either were to occur, there would be very cold temps with ice days quite possible due to the low sun at this time of year. Of course as well if there were repeated snow showers to eastern areas, there would be a greater chance of snow accumulations than if a similar event happened at the end of February (as in 2005). There is also the double edged sword of warmer sea temps off the east coast at this time of years, on the one hand this would pep up showers, but also make the make any snowfall in coastal areas far more marginal.
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.
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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 may well prefer the climate of New Zealand as a whole to that of the UK, mainly because of longer sunshine hours and a greater percentage of rainfall being convective- they also enjoy the 10 hours of daylight in winter, 14 in summer distribution that I would rather have. However, relatively low temperature variability in most locations, plus relatively few thunderstorms, makes NZ less appealing climate-wise than the aforementioned areas of continental Europe. I think I would favour the South Island (west & east both have advantages and disadvantages which may cancel each other out) over the North Island.
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.
Severe Tropical Cyclone Rene
in Hurricanes, Cyclones and Extreme weather worldwide
Posted
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.