Report: My visit to MetService

[Andrew Massie]

On a rainy Tuesday 6th October, I went to visit MetService in the Wellington Botanic Gardens, which I previously organised with Paul Mallinson, MetService Severe Convection Meteorologist.

After a ride up to the Gardens from Langdon Quay on the famous cable car, I walked to the MetService building and in the foyer was treated to an amazing display on a very large flat screen TV of numerous animated NZ flybys showing temps, windflow, rainfall predictions etc. impressive!

Paul met me, we went up to an office, and had a chat about the forum and the dynamics inside it and how Paul would like to establish a more open relationship with the forum in general, also that MetService value and want to encourage reports from forum members, not only with regard to thunderstorms, but also for other types of unusual or severe weather.
Paul also said he’d like to see more of us Forum people come to MetService and see what they do there.

Paul then took me to the forecasting office, and showed me where he works, introduced me to his colleagues and showed me his job, which was thoroughly fascinating, and amazing to see the models and sheer computing power resources that are available to MetService. Paul showed me how convection occurs, how that can be predicted, and we covered many different aspects of his job, and work history.

Paul M and I.JPG

Paul also showed me the other departments in his office, some of which were marine forecasting, aviation forecasting, and long term forecasting, all of which were very interesting in their own right!

Paul M at work.JPG

We then had a coffee, chatted about various other things (tsunami, civil defence, etc.) and that was the end of my tour!

I have to admit, as most of you already know, I’m nowhere near a meteorologists’ little finger, but I have an appreciation of technology and weather, and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Paul is a really nice guy, as are all his colleagues, and it was a really awesome experience!

Andrew Massie

[Brassnz]

Brilliant - great work.

[Manukau heads obs]

lucky bugger!
sounds like a great visit

[rawdon]

Andrew ..Glad you enjoyed your visit ... Its a great place to work .. I have been there more years than I care to remember!!

Steve
Upper Hutt

and yes Paul is a great guy...

[RWood]

Good to see!

[Andrew Massie]

Thanks for the great feedback,it was really awesome of Paul to show me round, and I felt it would do it justice to let everybody here how it went. Mutually beneficial!

[AndyWX]

Sounds like you had a great time Andrew. I was lucky enought to work there in the 1980's in the forecast room as a technical officer (data aquisition). It was a great place to work due to the fantastic people and the fact that we were all passionate about weather, I presume nothing has changed. Alot of the stuff you would have seen on your visit would not have existed when I was there. For example I find it hard to believe that we used to manually operate the satellite equipment to receive pics which would then be picked up by a taxi driver every afternoon and taken to the TV studio in time for the 6pm news. I also remember often having to restart the old Digital mainframe by manually flicking a long line of switches and checking to see that lights blinked in a particular sequence. We also had the best view in Wellington !

[Andrew Massie]

Hey Andy, it's funny, Paul showed me the old computer room! And as for the view (also seen on the MS Wellington webcam)...

MS view.JPG

This is only HALF of it everyone else! Awesome!

[Richard]

That would have been an interesting experience for you Andrew,myself and my sons class are heading to Wellington on a school trip next year,i wondering if we should see if we could visit the MS while we are there.

[rawdon]

Hi all ..The "computer room" is now our DATA CENTRE ..its situated in the basement and contains state of the art equipment ..hundreds of servers, fire and temp controlled hardware ups and a floating foundation for earthquakes etc etc ... It could be a visit all of its own ..

Steve
Upper Hutt

[Andrew Massie]

D*mn! Must come see that next time!

[AndyWX]

Andrew stop, you are making me all wistful about the old days and working there. The photo of the view out the window of the forecast room brings back lots of memories. The view is actually better now as there used to be these concrete slabs attached to the side of the building all around, but I understand they were taken down because of the earthquake risk. Where I was our main view looked out over towards Oriental Bay. On hot night shifts I used to open some of the windows and on one occassion had this huge native Puriri moth come in from the gardens and spend the evening buzzing everyone like a dive bomber.

[Andrew Massie]

Sorry, Andy!

[rawdon]

Moths are not permitted in the Forecast Room these days! ... In fact only a few windows can be opened ... The place is fully air conditioned ..

Steve

[AndyWX]

To tell you the truth Steve, I am pretty sure we were not supposed to open the windows then either. But on some nights it used to get unbearably hot and most of us technicians used to do it. I wasn't able to rescue that moth and it died after too many impacts with the heads of meteorologists. It was such a beautiful specimen that I suspended it on a string from the ceiling of the forecast room where it remained for a couple of days.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

If you have a hobby in moth's, maybe a job in the MetService, not for you?

JohnGaul
NZThS

[AndyWX]

John, it was such a very impressive moth. Those Puriri moths can get pretty big.