I see the Metservice now has snow forecast for Darfield on Wednesday - GFS still going for 10-20cm above 200m and even a small amount of snow to sea level but EC is not so sure and is forecasting only 5-10cm above 300m for mid Canterbury - I find in these scenarios EC turns out to be more accurate 95% of the time...
Quite a good proportion of Yesterdays Lightning activity was from Positive CG's, with 39% of the total strikes in the Tasman and Auckland Region, mainly due to the good upper and and mid level support getting a good charge dispersion.
Would account for bright forks of Lightning people were seeing and from what I saw yesterday.
Tornado Tim wrote:Quite a good proportion of Yesterdays Lightning activity was from Positive CG's, with 39% of the total strikes in the Tasman and Auckland Region, mainly due to the good upper and and mid level support getting a good charge dispersion.
Would account for bright forks of Lightning people were seeing and from what I saw yesterday.
Would explain why they were bright flashes and super loud and vibrations on a mother level. Must have been 2 positive ones cry close to me to have been only 3 seconds apart.
Excellent storm guys, nice to see some action happening somewhere .
Its certainly looking cold next week, the 850mb temperatues are indicative for near sea level but i dont like the 500mb temperature which is now -30C instead of -34C which it was yesterday.
This suggests to me its more 200-300m at this stage, and generally focusing more inland rather than the city and peninsula being a very almost S-SE flow.
Not making any major calls until 12 hours out just to be sure
Best T-storm out here for a while. Almost continuous lightning and thunder between about 3am and 4am, house-rattling at times, with some good fork-lightning observed.
Blitzortung NZ - Jul 9, 12am-4am.png
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I was intending to wake up and chase that storm this morning as it crossed North Auckland. But woke too late (before 3am)but did observe distant lightning/thunder from Grey Lynn as the system was moving away.
The spherics on the radio were every second so an energised storm!
Recorded 27.5mm here since yesterday arvo, most of which fell between 2:30am and 4:30am this morn.
Nice followup about last night's storm from MetService's Georgina Griffiths…
On Facebook GG wrote:Rough night, Waiheke? Thought you'd be interested in this: Over 500 lightning strikes recorded, 390 of which were recorded in the 2 hours until 322am this morning (shown below). Most of the intense thunderstorm activity, and the heaviest rainfall, was observed out over the Gulf, including Waiheke. (This is driven by the fact thunderstorms don't like cold feet, in case you were wondering, and favour the warmer seas at night in winter). It is always good for Islanders to take note when MetService issues a Severe Thunderstorm Watch in winter, meaning conditions are ripe for a severe storm, since you're one of the areas of Auckland most likely to see them.
MetService Radar - Jul 9, 3.22am.jpg
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