Now and Busting: Cold change for NZ

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Sun 24/04/2005 18:21

Well, it was there, then it went as quick as it came!

I saw a small part where me and steve were going along the road with some hail falling. We had much better footage.

John's was the stuff with lots of hail falling and lightning going off over those bushes in the foreground, there was a garage and car in frame to. Some other footage on there was nice to with that lightning lighting up the port hills!

Oh well, it was cool!!

Some footage on TV one to that looked good.

huttcrazy · Unread post by **huttcrazy** » Sun 24/04/2005 18:25

Pah. You guys get all the interesting stuff down south.

Here in the Hutt we had couple of lightning strikes at about 3.30am and some small hail / sleet. Greater Wellington council telemtry data shows the temperature going from 10 degrees down to 6 in 15 minutes. At the same time the average peak gust speed went from 2.5 m/s to 21 m/s

Southerlies were strong today. I went up to the airport at about 1.30 this afteroon. Reported winds were 28 Gusting to 48 (knots) and varying between 110 and 260 degrees. With a runway heading of 160 degrees it made for some entertaining landings..

Awesome footage on the news, and I feel encouraged by the superb images Arithon captured with his Powershot A75. I shall keep mine at the ready..

Cheers

James

Weather Watcher · Unread post by **Weather Watcher** » Sun 24/04/2005 19:06

Thunderstorms have been rumbling away in the eastern Hutt Valley for about the last 15 minutes (since about 6:45pm). Currently getting some small hail. It's very unusual to get thunderstorms in a cold southerly here in Wellington.

Fujita Phil · Unread post by **Fujita Phil** » Sun 24/04/2005 20:35

TV3 just had a News Update and showed and few secs of footage. Did you see it Aaron? Yours?

Storm Struck · Unread post by **Storm Struck** » Sun 24/04/2005 20:41

Still icy showers falling here hail/sleet some heavy but no thunder since this afternoon's bursts of hail.
Few pics I took from today enjoy
Cheers
JASON

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Sun 24/04/2005 20:42

Nope! Not on that update

. John's was though, his was the lighted up hail pouring down with the garage in the frame.

Bach!, there was better stuff on the tapes. With nice thunder to. Makes your subwoofer nice and happy!

Weather Watcher · Unread post by **Weather Watcher** » Sun 24/04/2005 21:05

Thunder and hail lasted about 45 minutes here in the Lower Hutt. Hail was small, but there was a lot of it. Picture attached....

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Sun 24/04/2005 21:48

It's very unusual to get thunderstorms in a cold southerly here in Wellington.

Yes. Today we have exceptionally cold upper air over relatively warm sea temps. The same air mass in August wouldn't be so violently unstable but for the warm sea temps we get in April. And so often with these cold outbreaks we see them advect eastward away from the country, this one makes a nice change. I think Hawkes Bay should get walloped overnight. And I notice some deep instability has got into the west of the North Island tonight.

Willoughby · Unread post by **Willoughby** » Sun 24/04/2005 21:54

NZstorm wrote:. I think Hawkes Bay should get walloped overnight. And I notice some deep instability has got into the west of the North Island tonight.

Yip, look out Taumarunui!!!

The risk is still there for some snow...

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Sun 24/04/2005 22:09

Aaron J Wilkinson wrote:Nope! Not on that update . John's was though, his was the lighted up hail pouring down with the garage in the frame.

Bach!, there was better stuff on the tapes. With nice thunder to. Makes your subwoofer nice and happy!

im not all that worried Aaron looks like they were just after stuff on hail in chch, just so happens we had lightning not so much hail and it was further down south.

Much rather watch that then anything on chch hail any day! lol

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Mon 25/04/2005 01:19

??

Some of that footage from Chch did look pretty good!

I haven't actually seen all ours yet, I'm guessing the tapes will come back tomorrow (possilby unlikely due to ANZAC day) or Tuesday. I might actually call in to their offices in town and pick them up since I'll be in town anyway.

I think I've figured out my problem, I need to set the white balance to day light or sun light etc on manual. I had it on automatic WB setting and with the dark skies it possibly figured things as being really overcast so set it as something really odd?? Maybe?...I'll try a day light WB setting next time anyway, I dare to think when that'll be. Probably in the distant future seen as we are heading into winter.

What WB setting did you use with your Canon DSLR Spwill when you took those lightning pics over Auckland?

Cheers.

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Mon 25/04/2005 08:25

Aaron, I would be inclined to leave the WB in auto.

Fine morn here with 8C.

We need another cold pool like that but this time it should come through the Tassie sea so Auckland can get a taste of some serious weather.

Michael · Unread post by **Michael** » Mon 25/04/2005 08:58

We can say we definitely will 100% get plenty of those continually between now and Xmas

NZstorm wrote: We need another cold pool like that but this time it should come through the Tassie sea so Auckland can get a taste of some serious weather.

GraemeWi · Unread post by **GraemeWi** » Mon 25/04/2005 09:29

NZstorm wrote:Aaron, I would be inclined to leave the WB in auto.

Fine morn here with 8C.

We need another cold pool like that but this time it should come through the Tassie sea so Auckland can get a taste of some serious weather.

Very un-tropical here in Auckland!

If anyone has any anecdotal stuff on snow in Auckland please pass onto me - I'm building up a collection of snow events in the Auckland region.

Cheers,

G

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Mon 25/04/2005 09:40

I'm building up a collection of snow events in the Auckland region.

Good on you. It would be interesting to see the results of your research. Unfortunately I don't have any details of snow events in Auckland.

Watch out for misreporting. A fall of hail in winter can be called snow. This could be a problem with early snow reports were there wasn't the scientific ethic for accuracy that there is today.

Also, wet hail can look like sleet when it hits the windscreen.

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Mon 25/04/2005 09:46

Missed watching the Storm footage on the TV News last night as I was out all Evening, but I see Arithon has put up a great photo account .

Aaron, I use an Auto WB setting even at night and have always been happy, have not explored manual settings yet.

Graeme, there's a snow event up at Silverdale, indoor skiing

.

tich · Unread post by **tich** » Mon 25/04/2005 09:47

Cloudless skies in Waiheke so far this morning, but the cold gusty southerly feels as cold as what it normally would be in winter in Chch. (this is probably one of the warmest place in NZ right now) This outbreak probably isn't an isolated one, so i may have missed the full impact of it, but I guess there'll probably be more similar southerlies in the near future.

Arithon · Unread post by **Arithon** » Mon 25/04/2005 10:06

Heres a zip file containg all the decent stills of what I shot the other night. It's interesting to see the difference in the fork in between frames. For reference, the camera does 15FPS at that res.

It might be interesting to correlate these with the overhead view of strikes. I could probably work out exacting timing of the strikes based on file date/time, frame number, and discrepency of camera clock with an internet time server?

Have we got an overhead shot showing strikes that we can use?

Jon

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Mon 25/04/2005 10:16

Canterbury peoples do you think it would be a good time to have a gathering of such soon?? beacause it looks like we have a bit of footage too view etc.

Arithon · Unread post by **Arithon** » Mon 25/04/2005 10:16

Woops, where'd that go...

Oh stink, disallowed format.

Anyone want to host it somewhere useful? Only 1.6mb
Jon

GraemeWi · Unread post by **GraemeWi** » Mon 25/04/2005 11:06

Jon's images are now online at http://www.graemewi.orcon.net.nz/pictur ... thons.html

Cheers,

G

Michael · Unread post by **Michael** » Mon 25/04/2005 11:21

Weather bee-bop here today with a SSW near gale 55 degrees

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Mon 25/04/2005 11:21

Arithon wrote:Heres a zip file containg all the decent stills of what I shot the other night. It's interesting to see the difference in the fork in between frames. For reference, the camera does 15FPS at that res.

It might be interesting to correlate these with the overhead view of strikes. I could probably work out exacting timing of the strikes based on file date/time, frame number, and discrepency of camera clock with an internet time server?

Have we got an overhead shot showing strikes that we can use?

Jon

Awsome pics there jon

Arithon · Unread post by **Arithon** » Mon 25/04/2005 11:51

Cheers, but I was just lucky that it was all moving slightly to the east of us. I wouldn't have been out taking pics if it had gone overhead

We had one incident in the past when living in Auckland that me and the wife were looking out the bedroom window watching the lightning, when suddenly one struck VERY close to us. So close that the flash and bang were instantaneous, and we fell back onto the bed blinded. Nasty stuff.

Jon

tgsnoopy · Unread post by **tgsnoopy** » Mon 25/04/2005 12:09

Kaimaikid's & My trip down to observe the arriving front was a almost a non-event. We headed down quite late due to no reports of problems on the Desert Road.

After eating dinner at our favorite truck stop in Turangi we shot down as far as Taihape, then headed back up north. We stopped at the Summit carpark on the Desert Road near the patiently waiting Works Infrastructure truck.

Outside air Temp was a mere -1.7Â°C* most of the time, the minimum I observed was -1.9Â°C and the highest was -0.3Â°C. There were quite strong winds, but sorry at this stage I don't have anything to measure them with.

I chatted to the truck Driver for a few minutes before retreating back to the car. He told a story of a similar event a few years ago where they was a sudden heavy flurry that dumped about 5cm in a few minutes trapping people. He pointed out a nearby hill and said the partial cover of that hill indicated it could happen at any time. He pointed out another nearby hill and said if it disappears it will be all on.

Unfortunately at 9pm with no real action we decided to call it a night and head home. I've just discovered my cars engine thermostat doesn't work and effectively I had no heating, subsequently it was getting rather brisk.

At no stage did we observe any lightning, but we did get a very breif heavy fall of snow that lasted maybe a minute. Very light very fine snow was falling a lot of the time but wasn't settling, ground temperatures were still too high. We did however observe some good ground level flurries of wind blown fine snow as we drove home.

I suspect if we'd stayed a little longer we would have seen a decent dump, but KaimaiKid had been up since 4.30am And I was growing weary and cold. As it was dark there weren't any photo's to be had. It sounds like the snow came through a few hours after we left, with the road being closed due to ice just after midnight.

I'm booking the car in for a fresh lot of antifreeze & a new thermostat this week. Next time I'll also take the sleeping bag!

Oh well, it beats sitting at home on this thing any day.

*Calibrated (with latent heat of water) digital thermometer.