Highs getting more intense

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Manukau heads obs
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Highs getting more intense

Unread post by Manukau heads obs »

HI
Bob McDavitt has retired now from M/S
this is a video about that
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6317019 ... ans-career
he makes a claim that he reckons highs are becoming more intense, and blocking more

certainly been alot of blocking highs to the east of NZ over the last few years!
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Chris Raine
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Re: Highs getting more intense

Unread post by Chris Raine »

When I worked in the Met Service back in the 70's Bob was trained by me as a Met Observer. all forecasters in those days had to work as met observers and do obs , balloon flights etc as part of their training to give them the practical fundamentals of the science all round involvement . Henry Hill used to plot the midnight map to speed up the time to carry out the analysis , certainly saved us some work as we had to do the NZ map and then the South Pacific map in an hour. Ahh the good old days at the NWFC Kelburn !
Manukau heads obs
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Re: Highs getting more intense

Unread post by Manukau heads obs »

I visited the M/S way back around 1980 or so
certainly not much automation then!
all hand drawn and plotted symbols
we also visited avalon for the tv studio...magnetic sunny symbols etc
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RWood
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Re: Highs getting more intense

Unread post by RWood »

Manukau heads obs wrote:HI
Bob McDavitt has retired now from M/S
this is a video about that
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6317019 ... ans-career
he makes a claim that he reckons highs are becoming more intense, and blocking more

certainly been alot of blocking highs to the east of NZ over the last few years!
Interesting observation. I think the test will be when we get a lengthy period of "non-Nina" - ie either neutral or on the El Nino side of average.
NZ Thunderstorm Soc
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Re: Highs getting more intense

Unread post by NZ Thunderstorm Soc »

Good luck with Bob in his retirement. I did meet the fellow once. Seemed to be a jolly sort of chap :D
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tunster
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Re: Highs getting more intense

Unread post by tunster »

The "more intense highs" idea sounds similar to Stu Ostro's ideas summarised here:

http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/8_20427.html

also a very big PDF file: http://i.imwx.com/web/multimedia/images ... update.pdf

More recently this: http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/8_25602.html

Specifically the 600dam 500hPa heights. I don't suppose anything close to that would have ever been observed in the Australasia region (though might be possible to get close over NW Australia).
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