NW GALES and Southerly Change +Runanga Tornado

[tich]

9PM radar shows an active band of showers about to cross Banks Peninsula, but I'm not sure about Chch. (still just partly cloudy here)

That band did deliver a period of rain out on the peninsula, but nothing to Chch. Perfectly fine day today.

[RWood]

tich do have a weather station in akaroa?? or record rainfall etc, would be interesting to compare differences to chch

I'm afraid I don't - I'm out there (to work on family land) only a few days a week. There's a working station at Le Bons Bay, which appears on the MetService obs. I must add that this station is about 100m asl, explaining why temps there are normally lower than Chch in a southerly.

For many years there was an "official" (ie published in met. service summaries) site at Onawe (Duvauchelle Bay area). Night temps were milder than on the plains in winter, as one would expect. Can't remember the altitude of the site. As for much of the peninsula, rainfall was considerably higher than Ch'ch or other plains locations, mainly reflected in high winter values - the summer (or late spring)/winter contrast was higher than elsewhere in the South Is.

Sunshine was equivalently lower in winter months, but sometimes in summer months would be higher than for any plains location - presumably when NE drift was blanketing the city and plains it could have been clear out there in some situations.

[Skywatcher]

... record rainfall etc, would be interesting to compare differences to chch

There's an amateur station up a hill (maybe 500m asl) above Little Akaloa on the north side of BP: http://andihill.dyndns.org/ It uses low speed radio telemetry to send data back to a house in Chch.

It recorded 2mm last night when I got less than 0.2mm here.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

No rain recorded here in Somerfield Christchurch.

JohnGaul
NZTS

[NZstorm]

Re Rununga tornado.

From what was presented on TV1 news last night, certainly looked to be a tornado. But I havn't looked at the weather data.

And yes, it doesn't take a thunderstorm to produce a tornado. Lower topped cb's (without thunder) are just as capable of producing tornadoes as high topped cb's.

[Thunder]

Re Rununga tornado.

From what was presented on TV1 news last night, certainly looked to be a tornado. But I havn't looked at the weather data.

And yes, it doesn't take a thunderstorm to produce a tornado. Lower topped cb's (without thunder) are just as capable of producing tornadoes as high topped cb's.

Ahh, there we go. I never knew that hence my thoughts before, thanks heaps! Will think of next time.

Cheers
Aaron Wilkinson

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Just reading through NIWAR's report for March, I noted there was a tornado through Blaketown on the 8th of March 2 days before the infamous F2-er tornado ripped through Greymouth. This tornado also went through Blaketown. I never heard any reports of the March 8th tornado? It said 3 houses were damaged.

JohnGaul
NZTS

[03Stormchaser]

I mentioned it on here