NZ Weather Forum

Bradley wrote:

CWUweather wrote:I don't come here to read criticism, I come here to read about weather from all of you who are indeed very knowledgeable. Certain unnecessary things just always seem to pop up.
That's like me asking you why you follow what CWU says if you think we are wrong...

Yes I noticed a number of times you have almost cut and pasted word for word someones thoughts on an upcoming system to your own nightly forecast, I guess it's a compliment to them in a way

We never copy and paste anything mate. All in our own words.

Keep things on topic here people... or risk getting your post getting deleted.

Can this BS be put to an end. Pages of this thread are back and forth crap and digging. I want to read weather reports and what people are thinking in their predictions. Even if they are wrong. Quite the jibes at people or forecasters and get on with enjoying the weather.

Off topic posts from now on will be instantly deleted. If it doesn't relate to the threads title, it will go.

a cloudy cold night here in lincoln, " much same as the city" i suppose, showers clearing up going by radar.
More settled tomorrow and frosts thurs!

Not out of the question for a few more showers coming into the city tonight. See the radar is showing a bit of a SSE flow to the SE of the Banks Peninsula. Wont be any low snow though, wont go below 4-5deg tonight.

On another note, Mt Lyford should be getting a good coating from this. LAst I heard they have had 12cm today and it is still snowing. Hopefully for their sake another 10cm overnight so they can open ASAP

Hills of Wellington could be getting snow ATM going by the radar.

Yes some very good moisture feeding in there. MS going for occasional showers... hmm seems a bit more intense than that. And shivers, its only 5.9deg there.. that's snow to 400-500m, will be interesting to see how low it gets.

Comparing the current radar images, and Metservice's 3day maps, it seems it is sticking further west than they are indicating? Thoughts?

This system delivered low level snow to many coastal areas.
There was hardly any precipitation here.
I see that today, also, the Southern Alps seemed to be bathed in wintry sunshine so they would of got not much snow up there although, mountains are not low-level.

Yes, went for a drive this afternoon and there was about 10-15cm at the hilltop Tavern. And by then it was sleeting, so probably a little bit more than that before then.

NZ Thunderstorm Soc wrote:This system delivered low level snow to many coastal areas.
There was hardly any precipitation here.
I see that today, also, the Southern Alps seemed to be bathed in wintry sunshine so they would of got not much snow up there although, mountains are not low-level.

How are ya john? how did you cope in last nights system? pretty in the clear i guess? iv brought a place in rolleston and moving in september so back out near you again

Deano wrote: TV One weather also don't help Metservice the way they throw a shower clouds about,Jim should have explained last night that most of the snow/shower activity would be coastal for Canterbury.

Very much agree Deano,

CWUweather wrote:On another note, Mt Lyford should be getting a good coating from this. LAst I heard they have had 12cm today and it is still snowing. Hopefully for their sake another 10cm overnight so they can open ASAP

That's odd,for Lyford to have got snow those showers would have to have pasted over here,this system hasn't delivered a drop of rain

Just a few comments/observations in the aftermath of this event.

As I said earlier, snow is a tricky business.

Yes, the temps stayed up at 2-3C overnight Monday for CHCH and the precip was rain. Over Banks Peninsula the main convergence line spent hours wobbling back and forth over the area and the temp at Le Bons Bay stayed around the 1C mark as I recall which indicated the snow level was about this level (they are at 230m from memory) and we saw pics in The Press of a good snowfall up there. Somebody posted 10-15Cm near the Hilltop Tavern. Our warning was for about 20cm above 300-400m I think.

Now looking at what happened in the Lower North Island...
There was a warning for 10-20cm of snow above about 300m I think for the Wellington and Wairarapa hills with a mention that snow could lower to 100-200m in Wairarapa.

Snow fell on the Rimutaka Road as forecast with about 10cm reported by the road crews Tuesday morning. This was from very heavy precip from the main convergence line (I call them streamers - a term from Canada) which usually starts at from, or south of Banks Peninsula. This never did move over Wellington and so there was no snow to lowish levels around Wellington. It remained over the Wairarapa area. Around dawn on Tuesday morning, the temp at Masterton had been 2-3C overnight and then with the heavy precip around 5-6am it started to snow for a time and the temp fell to about +0.5C. When daylight hit, you could see the snow right down on the local hills on the web cam. So the warning for Wairarapa worked out pretty well.

Anyway, what happened in the Wairarapa is what was thought could have happened in the CHCH area. We have three 8km models, and two finer scale models that all gave slightly different outputs and so one has to decide what to go with, taking more than just model information into account.

Yes, sometimes I get a bit tired of models too, but without them, we are DEAD IN THE WATER! And by the way, we DON'T live in trembling fear of what happened with the Christchurch snowfall event of a few years back. What we do do is learn from events like those, and I think we have got a lot smarter with handling snow. The snow level is always the hardest part.

Paul

Thanks Paul, again your expertise here is a breath of fresh air

Its a bit like the old adage...it didnt happen here so it didnt happen at all (when it did not that far away)
this occurs alot with predicted gale easterlies for auckland...the gulf will get it but not always the city (except the last few events!)
more often that not though in these setups CHCH itself misses out...so how much does past history events get weighed in when choosing which model to go with? (and then leaning that output a bit too going on past experience)
sort of thing

Richard wrote:

CWUweather wrote:On another note, Mt Lyford should be getting a good coating from this. LAst I heard they have had 12cm today and it is still snowing. Hopefully for their sake another 10cm overnight so they can open ASAP

That's odd,for Lyford to have got snow those showers would have to have pasted over here,this system hasn't delivered a drop of rain

They got 10cm overnight apparently... they have an average base of 50cm which is the second best in Canterbury.

Paul Mallinson wrote:Just a few comments/observations in the aftermath of this event.

As I said earlier, snow is a tricky business.

Yes, the temps stayed up at 2-3C overnight Monday for CHCH and the precip was rain. Over Banks Peninsula the main convergence line spent hours wobbling back and forth over the area and the temp at Le Bons Bay stayed around the 1C mark as I recall which indicated the snow level was about this level (they are at 230m from memory) and we saw pics in The Press of a good snowfall up there. Somebody posted 10-15Cm near the Hilltop Tavern. Our warning was for about 20cm above 300-400m I think.

Now looking at what happened in the Lower North Island...
There was a warning for 10-20cm of snow above about 300m I think for the Wellington and Wairarapa hills with a mention that snow could lower to 100-200m in Wairarapa.

Snow fell on the Rimutaka Road as forecast with about 10cm reported by the road crews Tuesday morning. This was from very heavy precip from the main convergence line (I call them streamers - a term from Canada) which usually starts at from, or south of Banks Peninsula. This never did move over Wellington and so there was no snow to lowish levels around Wellington. It remained over the Wairarapa area. Around dawn on Tuesday morning, the temp at Masterton had been 2-3C overnight and then with the heavy precip around 5-6am it started to snow for a time and the temp fell to about +0.5C. When daylight hit, you could see the snow right down on the local hills on the web cam. So the warning for Wairarapa worked out pretty well.

Anyway, what happened in the Wairarapa is what was thought could have happened in the CHCH area. We have three 8km models, and two finer scale models that all gave slightly different outputs and so one has to decide what to go with, taking more than just model information into account.

Yes, sometimes I get a bit tired of models too, but without them, we are DEAD IN THE WATER! And by the way, we DON'T live in trembling fear of what happened with the Christchurch snowfall event of a few years back. What we do do is learn from events like those, and I think we have got a lot smarter with handling snow. The snow level is always the hardest part.

Paul

Thanks for that Paul. Yes was driving over the HIll Top at about 2 yesterday afternoon. It was sleeting there by then as the snow level was rising, but there was still about 10-12cm settled. I was watching last night with interest over the Wellington/Wairarapa area, as the heavy showers and periods of rain moved over the area.

It was very close for Christchurch as you say, 2-3deg most of Monday night. There was actually a small amount of snow on the side of the road down to about 200m (just above Victoria Park) yesterday, so it all tunred out relatively as predicted I would say!
Cheers!

Paul Mallinson wrote:Just a few comments/observations in the aftermath of this event.

As I said earlier, snow is a tricky business.

Yes, the temps stayed up at 2-3C overnight Monday for CHCH and the precip was rain. Over Banks Peninsula the main convergence line spent hours wobbling back and forth over the area and the temp at Le Bons Bay stayed around the 1C mark as I recall which indicated the snow level was about this level (they are at 230m from memory) and we saw pics in The Press of a good snowfall up there. Somebody posted 10-15Cm near the Hilltop Tavern. Our warning was for about 20cm above 300-400m I think.

Now looking at what happened in the Lower North Island...
There was a warning for 10-20cm of snow above about 300m I think for the Wellington and Wairarapa hills with a mention that snow could lower to 100-200m in Wairarapa.

Snow fell on the Rimutaka Road as forecast with about 10cm reported by the road crews Tuesday morning. This was from very heavy precip from the main convergence line (I call them streamers - a term from Canada) which usually starts at from, or south of Banks Peninsula. This never did move over Wellington and so there was no snow to lowish levels around Wellington. It remained over the Wairarapa area. Around dawn on Tuesday morning, the temp at Masterton had been 2-3C overnight and then with the heavy precip around 5-6am it started to snow for a time and the temp fell to about +0.5C. When daylight hit, you could see the snow right down on the local hills on the web cam. So the warning for Wairarapa worked out pretty well.

Anyway, what happened in the Wairarapa is what was thought could have happened in the CHCH area. We have three 8km models, and two finer scale models that all gave slightly different outputs and so one has to decide what to go with, taking more than just model information into account.

Yes, sometimes I get a bit tired of models too, but without them, we are DEAD IN THE WATER! And by the way, we DON'T live in trembling fear of what happened with the Christchurch snowfall event of a few years back. What we do do is learn from events like those, and I think we have got a lot smarter with handling snow. The snow level is always the hardest part.

Paul

awesome thanks paul

I think it can come down to the timing of the upper level system also, coldest upper level air crossing when the flow is onshore.
The Cbs looked much deeper over Wairarapa. Bigger cbs = colder precipitation. I think Wairarapa got the better of the upper level trough.

Very heavy shower came across at lunchtime, absolutely thumped down for about ten minutes in Cashmere, road drainage coped poorly with flash surface flooding. Fortunately it was short lived, last gasp of the flow I reckon

Yes, and now it has become nice and fine and sunny here.
Much more pleasant.
That rain around lunchtime, must of been local as nothing fell here.
Welcome back to Rolleston, Mikey

Perhaps a change of the title to say nz and not just canty is in order.

The matamata chronicle has 3 awesome pictures of the snow up the kaimais. It was quite a bit of snow up there as these pictures show by someone taken in a helicopter. I can't put a link up as I'm on my phone. Maybe someone on a computer can?