Cold Snap For late May

[Michael]

Not me!

We all seem to want bad weather every week which is ok coming from us, but if we had stormy weather all the time we would get sick of it.
Jason.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Please keep to the subject of this forum and follow the rules laid out by Foggy, the chief moderator of this forum.


JohnGaul
NZTS

[Gary Roberts]

Maybe the NZ Weather Forum needs a separate climatology and meteorology section for objective discussion of the science of weatherology.

[Lawrence]

I for one have been waiting out on this event, i think it's early days to be saying snow to sea level unless models are showing a significant blast within a 2 day range.
Yes we had sleet nearly snow a few weeks ago, but that was from a low off BP below 1000hp.
It's not even winter yet and people are complaining about no snow, May is a settled month usually especailly for the south island it's not until June when big events start showing up on the severe radars.
I know it is abit boring having 3-4 days set up ahead of just showers or rain and it would be nice to have a little spice added to it all, so what put it aside go off and do indoor activities with others then before you know it the sun will be out again and hopefully an even better weather event on the horizon.
I don't like people on here who use the negative attidude from previous years events, '' ohh it hasnt snowed here in 3 years so it's not going to again in the future'' where is the confidense and belief.
Ok we possibly did have better years for weather from 1982-2004 with more thunderstorm days, snow events, and windstorms, but we have to stay positive it's not bad luck it's just a phase the earth is going through with other areas in the world getting more storms than us.
We all seem to want bad weather every week which is ok coming from us, but if we had stormy weather all the time we would get sick of it.
It's like if we all went and lived in Darwin for a few months during storm season, there's practically storms every day there and we would get sick of them because most would be same instead of having storms every so often and actually enjoying them.
Cheers
Jason.

Jason ,your my best mate for that, could not of put it better myself, I still believe that it WILL EVENTUATE SOME low level snow over the next 48 hours ,if it don't ....then I’m not really bothered ,hey it's just weather and were all just meteorologists and we can't control mother nature, simple as. Models, facts, evidence is changeable a moments notice, we really are looking at chaos, trying to predict the next move of a random scheme, that’s what make us all special. And we don’t get paid for it.

[sthguy]

I've not heard of any snow falling on any of the major road systems in Otago or Southland through today. The obvious exception may be the Crown Range [close to 1200m] and of course the Milford road near the Homer Tunnel. These are both genuine alpine roads.
None of the other major roads are above about 650m? although some lesser sealed roads are higher. The back road through Moa Flat springs to mind and is alway a spot with spectactular drifting after a good cold SW outbreak. Outram to Middlemarch as well when snowfalls are quite low as a good stretch is on a broad ridge a little above 400m. Went through there in the early 70's once and the drifts in cuttings where snow accumulated were higher than the car...
This event was alway going to be very marginal for snow to fall lower than 600-700m, look at the temperatures in the last few days on Macca, Campbell, Enderby. Not cold enough. Macca was coolish, down to 2C at times but normally temps warm at least 4C when being advected north onto southern NZ. Campbell/Enderby not below 4C.
The unknown factor is how far Fzls' will be lowered by rainfall. Under certain conditions in heavy precip and lightish lower level winds {esp if pools of very cold air are trapped in inland basins} the snow level will fall far lower than the actual Fzl would indicate. More a June-July-August threat though.

[tich]

TV1 Weather News showed quite alot of snow on Cadrona Skifield today, but only a dusting about the Lindis Pass. (which is about 900m at its summit)

[sthguy]

TV1 Weather News showed quite alot of snow on Cadrona Skifield today, but only a dusting about the Lindis Pass. (which is about 900m at its summit)

Oh -yes, sorry, the other alpine road down this way...

[sthguy]

OT

Why does this board say ' Fri 23/05/2008 00:34' when its an hour earlier, and Thursday??

[Myself]

Jason ,your my best mate for that, could not of put it better myself, I still believe that it WILL EVENTUATE SOME low level snow over the next 48 hours ,if it don't ....then I’m not really bothered ,hey it's just weather and were all just meteorologists and we can't control mother nature, simple as. Models, facts, evidence is changeable a moments notice, we really are looking at chaos, trying to predict the next move of a random scheme, that’s what make us all special. And we don’t get paid for it.

So what you're saying is "we're not meteorologists"?

The weather is also not random.

[Lawrence]

The weather is also not random.

Erm,I think you'll find it is.

Lets just start with the atom, then move on to molecules and then we will go onto dynamical system, evolution function, evolution parameter and then we will Measure theoretical definition.

[Myself]

The weather is also not random.

Erm,I think you'll find it is.

Lets just start with the atom, then move on to molecules and then we will go onto dynamical system, evolution function, evolution parameter and then we will Measure theoretical definition.

We have concepts and models which predict pretty well what happens to the weather on a large scale. If weather were random, there would be no model that could work. It's firmly routed in the laws of physics. It's a set of deterministic systems; our problem is generally in lack of information and the non-linearity which allows the systems to exhibit seemingly random motions at times.

[gllitz]

Not so sure this is necessarily the thread for this, I fear we are getting a wee bit off track for the "Cold Snap For late May"...
BUT, I have to agree with Myself (sounds kinda funny typing that! )...I believe the weather is NOT random...

Random (one definition I found, anyway) is an adjective meaning "proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern".
As RWood and many others in this forum have pointed out in the past and what is observable to everyone, there are definite patterns to the weather. It is just getting the specifics of the pattern which is a wee bit difficult to do (some do it better than others, e.g. M/S and TonyT and co....)

Statistically speaking, random would be "of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen."
I dare say the various items in the weather set (tornadoes, hurricanes, drought, heat waves, thunderstorms, snow storms, etc) do NOT have an equal probability of happening tomorrow here in NZ. Why? We are in what would be a late fall/early winter PATTERN of weather...

Just my thoughts on this, and they may be flawed, I admit, but my $0.02...perhaps better placed in a different thread than this one.

Oh, and I am still not convinced of low level snow with this system...

[Gary Roberts]

If it makes anybody feel a little better, there is a light dusting of snow down to around 800-1,000m in the Mackenzie.

It may even have fallen to "ground-level" at Lake Tekapo overnight (approx 730m ASL), although it won't have settled.

Just cold drizzle falling now, but at least you snow worshipers finally got something!

[Inny Binny]

Myself/gllitz...I think what he was getting at was that weather is completely random...under certain probabilities. Weather is utterly probabilistic (at least until we have more control over it) and therefore random. Much like the quantum world, we can only predict the probability of something being somewhere.

And so that is the job of meteorologists.

I'm not very convinced any more of low level snow either.

[Fujita Phil]

Not so sure this is necessarily the thread for this, I fear we are getting a wee bit off track for the "Cold Snap For late May"...
BUT, I have to agree with Myself (sounds kinda funny typing that! )...I believe the weather is NOT random...

I agree! After reading all of the last few pages of this thread... let it end. Somebody tell me if I'm right in seeing a cold polar surge coming late next week and start a new thread on it.

And that would prove that the weather isn't random.... a calculated cold snap by Mother Nature for the long weekend.... oh and the Gold Guitars

[Lawrence]

Not so sure this is necessarily the thread for this, I fear we are getting a wee bit off track for the "Cold Snap For late May"...
BUT, I have to agree with Myself (sounds kinda funny typing that! )...I believe the weather is NOT random...

I agree! After reading all of the last few pages of this thread... let it end. Somebody tell me if I'm right in seeing a cold polar surge coming late next week and start a new thread on it.

And that would prove that the weather isn't random.... a calculated cold snap by Mother Nature for the long weekend.... oh and the Gold Guitars

You right,we can see a polar surge next week.

Inny Binny got the jest of what I trying to put across. I suppose I used the wrong term when I said random; obviously we must take into account the laws of physics.
What I was trying to say was that Small variations (Micro scale) of the initial weather condition of a dynamical system say a front, may produce large variations in the long term behaviour of the system. Thus a small change in the initial condition of the system will cause a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events over time. The mathematical models can to a certain degree be accountable for slight inaccuracies but then there are, like I was saying; a small percentage of the data that the model sees is left open to chance.

Sorry if I termed the argument wrongly ,hope you forgive me.

And while we are on the subject of models, I can now also say that no low level snow could eventuate over the week end ,except may be Saturday night to Sunday night above 600m ,possibly; may be; but not sure yet; it might or then might not; who knows......

[gopolks]

Is their really a polar surge for next week? or are people joking?

[Gary Roberts]

Is their really a polar surge speculated about for next week?

Fixed.

Just got back from Lake Tekapo. Almost no snow at all there. The snowline was down to ~1,500m this morning but there's not a lot left now.

[gopolks]

Opps wrong choice of words, but my question still stands.

[southernthrash]

Cola shows a good southern ocean low dragging a lot of cold air up with it, but its a long way away. Cold be a very interesting one to watch

Coronet peak were reporting 40cm of snow in 24 hours this morning, looking at webcams that seems reasonable. Heavy snow looks to have settled to 700/800m through the wakatipu basin, although as low as 4-500 around coronet peak (which has an awesome microclimate). Still raining/snowing at higher levels through there.

I've heard reports of good snowfall at Ohau skifield as well, and Mt Hutt has recieved a lot. Got an email to say snow on the ground at Mt Cook village too (though not the first they've had this year), so either Gary struggles with estimating height, or a large pool of warm air sits over lake tekapo and omarama.

[southernthrash]

Watching the way this bad boy has tracked, it should hit the south island next thursday night/friday. 540 line staying nice and high for the next few days too.

[tich]

Dull and cold in Chch today, but no more rain or drizzle since last night.

The high and complex terrain of the central South Island could easily result in some areas being either sheltered from or exposed to the bands of cold moisture, hence the varying snow levels.

[southernthrash]

^ exactly

[Vertigo]

sorry to interrupt your southern discussion, but as its part of the cold weather at the moment.... damn, theres a nice line of thunderstorm currently raging over northern northland!

[Gary Roberts]

The high and complex terrain of the central South Island could easily result in some areas being either sheltered from or exposed to the bands of cold moisture, hence the varying snow levels.

I'd say it's more due to the fact that there was almost no snow outside of Southland and not a lot of it even there. With SI temps being quite mild at the moment, what snow did fall won't last long. Blue sky over the central Mackenzie now.