J07
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Posts posted by J07
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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.
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Even High pressure sitting over the country doesn't always guarantee an inversion, it's one of those things where it probably occurs as much by chance as it does owing to a specific set of conditions.
With a high over the country, there would always be an inversion at the top of the boundary layer.
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Yeah, that was a real beauty up there yesterday! There was a severe thunderstorm warning issued for those.
There's been some very humid air hanging around, which has made conditions more like February up in Northland. Day after day they've been getting highs of mid to high 20s, with dewpoints of 19C-21C. Despite all that, most places barely got any rain. But those that got it...really got it.
Mean 24 hour temperatures in Whangarei since last Sunday:
21C; 22C; 23C; 22C; 21C; 19C. Today will be much fresher.
Pretty terrible start to the summer for eastern areas though. Cold, grey and miserable in Wellington for far too many days.
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Thing is, the Beaufort Scale is supposed to be referring to mean speeds. You may have had gusts of 130 mph a few years back, but mean speeds of 130 mph are quite something else.
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I think this is one, from the christmas pudding, I got 15°C on this day
www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/2004/Rrea00120040204.gif
not what I wanna see but at least its normally dry down here, much better than the setup from thurs this week
Looking at that chart you would almost think "write off" for the entire month. But I remember a decent dumping of snow in Bristol at the end of Feb 2004. Probably they haven't had one like it until Feb 2009!
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Highest temperature this month will turn out to be the 32C in Whakatane (new November record) and Kawerau (not a November record).
Today a weakening trough is moving north, followed by a dramatic change to recent weeks with the southerly behind it. Temperatures in the south island more like mid teens rather than mid-high 20s.
I am quite happy to get some rain here, but it's rather too cold for the tomatoes....
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Two places hit 32C today, and dewpoints were also high in those locations (around 18C). A warm and humid day for pretty much everyone, except east coast of the South Island where temperatures inland were in the low 20s and dewpoints below zero.
There also were severe thunderstorms this afternoon, with a very high tropopause (14km apparently).
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Eh, a funny old day. Kaikoura reached 29C at 1AM, then plummeted to 16C in a gale force southerly. For proper daytime highs, 32C has been reached in the Bay of Plenty, and with dewpoints of around 18C up there it would feel pretty humid.
It's certainly warm for November!
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Todays highs were 31C at Alexandra and Dunedin Airport. This is the warmest day since February.
The cold front at 9PM was clearly between Timaru and Christchurch. Still 24C at Le Bons Bay (9PM), but that should drop quickly as the front goes through.
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Seriously, Why do they want to know the inner workings of the universe anyway? They'll never be able to do that, the universe if infinate and so is time, just think of the amount of tax payers money they could waste bearing that in mind
What a soul destroying response.
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I should have saved the surface chart for this event, but from memory it looks very similar to what has hit the UK in recent days with a strong, warm and very moist flow benefiting from orographic lift. They also happened at pretty much the same time of year (SSTs relatively high).
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It was an interesting event, it is not too common in winter for one of those roads (Napier-Taupo Highway, which reaches about 800m) to get such heavy snow. So in October, very unusual.
Good to see a typical kiwi in there at the end, digging in the snow whilst wearing very short shorts.
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Today, 3 locations reached 30C.
Of those, the most interesting was probably Oamaru, which reached 24C at 6AM, rose to 30C early afternoon, then in 30 mins fell to 12C with a southwest change.
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Latest Pacific(El Nino)state from NOAA
It Looks as if El Nino has strenthened (+2.5c-3c in places) and spread Eastwards.
The warm water has got quite a long way west hasn't it....
Also it looks terrible for swimming around New Zealand. Looks like a repeat of Christmas 2006 could be on the cards (too cold for swimming)!
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A strange Spring here with a lack of "normal weather". After a warm and dry September, and the warmest August ever, we had the coldest October since the 1940s.
November has been mostly dry, and now some warmth is heading our way.
Today Timaru hit 29C, which makes this the warmest day since September 14th!
Tomorrow, somewhere will reach 30C, for the first 30C of the season. (3 weeks later than last year).
Gisborne should be glorious the next few days.
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Clear, but cold at 8C (9PM). Just got dark. The poor, cold weather of October seems almost to be over, with a few fronts early next week and then subtropical ridging influencing us for next weekend. A bit worried that the high will be too far west though, it seems to be a trend.
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Hi all, 33c clear and sunny AGAIN! Exmouth oz. Cannot wait to get back.
How on earth did you end up in Exmouth?! I think they are in the part of WA that does not even get rain in the monsoon (!) and has to rely on tropical cyclones for the only rainfall of the year!
Terrible weather in NZ at the moment - it's much colder than August! Our high was a pitiful 11C, and the nationwide high was an unbelievable 17C. It's a cold late October day when no where really gets close to 20C. Tomorrow will be warmer though.
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This stuff is not new, it's been there a few years. But it's useful to have this stuff all in one place. The numerical methods is particularly good, summing up all the major schemes like leapfrog and forward time/centred space pretty concisely and methodically! (And without being too dry).
The notes do require reasonable exposure to maths and physics though. The meteorology is almost an aside. This stuff is practically just applied mathematics.
Their section on the spectral method is especially interesting, because it is the method used at ECMWF and also GFS I think. (UKMO is fixed grid, Canadian model uses finite elements...I believe).
When using finite difference techniques for evolutionary problems, we only consider grid-point values of the de-pendent variables; no assumption is made about how the variables behave between grid points. An alternative ap-
proach is to expand the dependent variables in terms of a finite series of smooth orthogonal functions. The problem
is then reduced to solving a set of ordinary differential equations which determine the behaviour in time of the ex-
pansion coefficients.
That makes the spectral method seem more elegant, though it has limitations and they do list them.
Two key advantages: (avoiding aliasing is a good one)
(ii) Non-linear quadratic terns calculated without aliasing (if computed in spectral space oquadratic grid).
(iii) For a given accuracy fewer degrees of freedom are required than in a grid-point model.
A major disadvantage (since limited area models are pretty important...):
(v) Spherical harmonics are not suitable for limited-area models.----
Note that they've only listed the syllabus of the courses, not the material itself. What you can access now is background reading.
Anyway, a good find thanks!
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This question might sound silly, and there may be something I am overlooking, but is there any real reason why you seldom here of tsunami panic in Australia? Judging by the activity in the area recently, I would have thought Australia is at real risk from tsunamis.
Sydney Opera House was evacuated a few months ago because of a tsunami warning.
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Not looking good if they're talking about this already....
Apparently a few fires have been underway down south due to strong, warm dry winds. Not helped by Dunedin hitting 23C at 2AM one morning- so much for "the Scottish City"!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch/2868349/Canterbury-drought-likely-say-forecasters
High temperatures and strong winds are drying Canterbury out and bringing the threat of drought closer.Forecasters say there is little chance of any significant respite over the next few months from the increasingly dry conditions.
Barely any rain has fallen along the South Island's east coast this month, with only 0.2 millimetres recorded in Christchurch and none in Kaikoura and Oamaru.
The dry start to September follows three months of below-average rainfall. Christchurch has had just 111.8mm of rain since June 1, about 100mm less than, and only 53 per cent of the long-term average.
Temperature records have also been broken as warm northwesterly winds bring temperatures more like summer after the country's warmest August on record.
Timaru had its hottest September day in 124 years of records on Monday, when the temperature soared to 28.2 degrees Celsius, beating the previous highest September temperature of 26.4C, recorded last year.
Other temperature records broken on Monday include Orari with 27.5C and Cromwell with 26C. Oamaru had its second-highest September maximum of 26.4C, as did Dunedin with 25.4C.
The Australian desert dust that blanketed Canterbury on Monday played tricks on Environment Canterbury's (ECan) pollution monitoring network.
Rangiora, Ashburton, Timaru, Waimate and Geraldine recorded their highest pollution levels of the year on Monday night, only it was not smoke and particulates but dust.
Blue Skies Weather forecaster Tony Trewinnard said predominantly dry weather expected through to the end of the year would probably leave Canterbury dusty enough without the help of dust from Australia.
An El Nino bringing westerly winds, coupled with an apparent shift in seasons, was to blame.
"I think it is a dry outlook and I think that horrible D word [drought] will be close to people's lips by the end of the year," Trewinnard said.
"Everything's early. That's been the case with all our seasons this year.
"Our autumn started early, winter started early with that cold, stormy May, spring started at the end of July or beginning of August, and now we're getting almost summer temperatures and it's only September."
He expected warm west to northwesterly weather this month, but more settled weather was possible next month.
"I still expect it to stay quite dry; then in November I suspect the north-westerlies will crank up again," he said.
"Where we head to after that, I wouldn't mind betting December remains drier and that people will be starting to talk about drought.
"By then we'll have had three or four months of low rainfall, high temperatures and sunshine and northwest winds."
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research senior climate scientist Georgina Griffiths said soil-moisture levels in the eastern South Island were starting to fall.
"The last three months have been quite dry and all of a sudden August was record warm, and with all those nor'westers the temperatures ramped up heaps and we are now starting to see the effects of that on soil moisture, certainly in the last few days," she said.
MetService spokesman Bob McDavitt said there was no useful rain likely for Canterbury during the next week.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/2872513/Fire-watch-as-green-drought-nears
The head of the district's rural fire service says it will be several weeks before a decision is made whether to bring in early fire restrictions.South Canterbury principal rural fire officer Rob Hands said he was closely watching the increasingly dry conditions, which almost have the district in a green drought.
"It is definitely drier now than the same time last year, [but, restrictions] will be determined over the next few weeks."
Mr Hands said the region would need several significant rainfalls to prevent early fire restrictions, which would normally come in during the shoulder periods to Christmas.
What was green at the moment was dry enough to burn, he said.
If there were to be burn-offs, Mr Hands said they should be well-planned and take "the commonsense approach".
It included having a system to contain the fire if it got out of control and making a courtesy call to neighbours and the local fire brigade before setting fire to paddocks, he said.
A fire in a pine plantation was still burning two days after it started from an old burn-off.
Mr Hands said firefighters had been keeping an eye on the area and found about six hotspots yesterday, though it was not causing "any grief", unlike the day before.
Two helicopters were used to fight the fire in the 6ha plantation.
Mr Hands estimated only 20 to 30 per cent of the pine trees were unscathed.
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My mother puts the heating on even in August, if she's cold. Clearly gone soft since living through 62/63!
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Phew, what a scorcher. As expected records fell today. New September record maxima on the South Island for Alexandra and Timaru, which hit 29C and 27C respectively.
At 6PM it was still 22C in Christchurch. They've had 6 days so far this month over 20C and no rain at all. It's only the first month of Spring.
Relative humidities have been very low and there's been plenty of dust about. RHs varying from around 8% to 20% during the foehn, and temperatures above 20C at the same time. Winds have gusted to 50 knots in exposed places. Essentially all this is drying things out very early in the season, and with an El Nino summer on the way eastern areas are quite likely to have some real struggles on their hands. Come December we could well see dessicating nor'westers blowing all the top soil in Canterbury out to sea. Unless something changes, that is.
As it stands, the nights are still longer than the days....and there's another blast of warmth heading for SE Australia and then us early next week.
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A truly monumental day in New Zealand!
First 80F of the season with Timaru hitting 27C. But then Alexandra beats it with a jaw dropping 29C!
We haven't even reached the Spring equinox yet!
Relative humidities again very low combined with high temperatures. Temperatures over 20C combined with RHs in the single digits are going to dry things out very quickly- and add into that the hot dry winds gusting to 50 knots in places.
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Warmest day nationwide since April. Most places hit 20C. 17C here, but sunny all day.
Tomorrow some warm air from Aussie makes its way over. 30C was recorded in Melbourne (almost a Sept record). Records may fall in the South Island tomorrow.
New Zealand Weather
in Weather Around The World
Posted
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.