A Collosal Paekakariki Twister

[cupoteacoast]

December was insane for funnel clouds in Paekakariki with the westerly systems. Captured a truly enormous one on 14 Dec 2012, not long after dawn. Weather was NW - WNW with a massive towering cumulus by the hills under Mt Wainui (near Transmission Gully) in Paekakariki, others rising. Convergence present, with multiple cloud streets from Kapiti Island arriving over us. Usual stuff with a NW, lots of rotation & clouds flowing along the hill tops from a southerly direction - that is a normal; NW or WNW along the coast and southerly along the hills with lots of nasty shear at ground level. I've often wondered if this is the system turning to low pressure, in order to make the big upward climb. Hard to measure, as we are consistently lower pressure than Paraparaumu is, where Met's records are taken. This day, as the cloud streets come onshore, some major horizontal rotation started up. Rather eerie when this happens, entire cumulus and/or streets rotate and funnels drop, parallel to Mt Wainui/Transmission Gully. Just the rotation along the hill tops was insane in itself. In QE Paek opposite Transmission Gully, what at first looked like a rising and fast rotating towering cumulus appeared from ground level ... I was very weary as I've seen a tornado rise up from the ground here and I distrust them. This rising beast pulled in other intakes, in a circle around it, forming a massive spinning structure. As it rose, it took the shape of a massive tornado, with the clouds it pulled in being shredded as scud. The ensuing twister was absolutely huge and spinning very, very rapidly. Being on foot and in a completely isolated location, I bolted for the coast, to get away from it, stopping to take pix and then moved on. 3 pix here, in the third, you can see where it has already made contact with the ground .. can see the stream of air. The big twister went to ground level, but I didn't stick around to see what was what ... just in case. For scale of this thing, check out the fully grown Norfolk Pine in the foreground.

[Manukau heads obs]

sure is alot of adjectives for what you see in the pictures

[jamie]

im really not seeing much in those pictures. Infact they look like fiboursy nothing. In the bottom picture are you referiing to the left or the right of the tree as to where we should be looking?

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Nice pictures. Just looks like an ordinary swirl to me

[wembley]

You've got got good pics there,