NZ Weather Forum

You can see the rotation in the towering Cu.West of Ashburton looking North

Marvellous photos, people!

Great shot of the cloud wrapping !

Storm approaching Wakanui beach
Left shortly after this photo with lightning bolts getting too close for comfort on the way back to Ashburton.

My attempt at a Pano

Wicked photo's, those panoramas are awesome! Better then what I got, will have to learn how to do them. I went out and chased, the first cell of the day looked more chaseable where as the second one was very fast moving even though though the gust front looked good! Here's a few pics. Hail was what fell in Mt Somers.

Great pictures. Any damage from that hail?

03Stormchaser wrote:You can see the rotation in the towering Cu.West of Ashburton looking North

Looks strange seeing rotation in that direction. Used to seeing it in a northern hemisphere situation.

Great pics guys. Looked like a good storm. Shame our day up here was a bust. Never mind tho.

oh yeah, GREAT photos

Cheers. No damage that I know of at the moment, will see what some of the locals say at the pub tonight.

Have you guys checked out Tuesday on the models! Looks like a rerun of today almost.

I can see lots of inter-cloud lightning coming from a storm on the eastern side of the Tararua Ranges, out towards Porangahau. Saw lightning at least every 15 to 20 seconds, over the last 10 minutes.

Actually it looks to be closer, according to the rain radar. Looks to be near Pahiatua.

Fantastic shots you guys, really well done!
A pity that the north Island setup didn't get going, oh well another time will come soon
I blame the cold near constant outflow and muck left over from the collapsing CB's.

Awesome photos you guys.

Yes some great photos fella's, well done.

I would have rated that storm as a 4 outa 10,bit of lightning but not a lot,but the most hail ive seen here,i was standing 59m from the house and i could hear that roar of what sounded like wind way off in the distant,but couldn't see any trees waving?.........****!!,thats hail coming,just made it to the house when it hit.

Well done all on the chasing yesterday and some great photos there.

Busy weekend for me so no weather chasing however it looks like I didn't miss much this end of NZ

Richard wrote:I would have rated that storm as a 4 outa 10,bit of lightning but not a lot,but the most hail ive seen here,i was standing 59m from the house and i could hear that roar of what sounded like wind way off in the distant,but couldn't see any trees waving?.........****!!,thats hail coming,just made it to the house when it hit.

Just after I took the pic of Aaron with the gust front we went back on the SH1 towards Chch, and the hail coming from Ashburton was leaving a very definite fast moving white line on the road ! That would have been a very cool thing to film (and record the roar too) but I was busy driving ...

Great photos of that gust front guys

I've been experimenting with Magic Lantern firmware for the Canon DSLRs and it almost eliminates the rolling shutter problem with recording lightning. This is a short clip of the gust front approaching. Photos are a sequence of frames of the best lightning I caught yesterday just before the hail arrived.

Was that lightning associated with the gust front or from the earlier thunderstorm?

NZ Thunderstorm Soc wrote:Was that lightning associated with the gust front or from the earlier thunderstorm?

That lightning was from the gust front captured after the video clip when I'd moved to a less exposed location. I also saw a few more lightning flashes from the gust front including a CG but was either not recording or pointing in the wrong direction. The thunder was impressive, too. I meant to say that the video is realtime even though there's no sound which shows the speed it was moving at.

The CG video frame I posted yesterday was from the earlier TS.

The only CG I got from behind the Gust Front(Video Still)

yeah just awesome photos!! im getting better at taking photos.. slowly lol, how do you make them that big though to put up on the forum? as when i try putting them in that big they fail to go in??

nzstorm i see what you mean by the conditions tuesday.. you can read more models then i have but i se the simula sort of set up as yesterday.

mikestormchaser wrote:when i try putting them in that big they fail to go in??

That's what she said !

Erm ... so about your pictures issues, you know you're limited in size when you upload on the forum. I think it's about 300 or 360kB, so if your shot isn't resized and/or compressed you can't upload it.
An other way to display a shot on the forum is to upload it on an image hosting website (like Flickr) and copy/paste the html code to embed a thumbnail of your shot in your message. You can choose how big the thumbnail is, and it also gives a direct link to your shot. Which is what I did for my stitched panorama.

Hope this helps.

What a day that was yesterday fantastic chasing and the biggest hail ive come across in my life so far, pretty dangerous.
It didn't surprise me when we stopped once the hail core had shifted to see that cork screwing TCU at the back, reminded me of photos from the 4th September 2012 storm.
Its a frustrating game of chasing to get in the right position with no precipitation falling so you can get out and film take photos etc, which we spent a lot of yesterday moving around but when its fast moving theres not much you can do.
The first cell was slow moving as I initially first thought would happen, there was no southerly with the first one which gave it ammo to develop strongly and get some rotation going.
Ive noticed on several occasions out chasing a mountain valley wind from the W-NW that randomly pops up, I think its something to do with the snow on the hills the cold air rushes down the valleys to warmer air below and collides with the onshore lighter winds and upper level SW flow.
This could be why 1- The bulk of the storms yesterday or severity were more west of the city 2- why the storms take that path inland instead of the typical coastal movement we see.
It would be good to see if the storms this summer change course abit when there is no snow on the foothills and alps to the west.

Thanks for the comments with regards to yesterday I could see the ingrediants were there for a decent set up, and by looking at Tuesday a very similar set up .

A short video taken from the Port Hills looking west during the second storm yesterday. Mostly time-lapse footage, but managed to get a couple of CGs too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkBGaCR-YVA