Long Calm Autumn in Mid NI

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TokWW
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Long Calm Autumn in Mid NI

Unread post by TokWW »

After the heavy rains of April 15th we have gone back to very steady calm spells with almost continuous SE winds. The temperatures are slowly dropping as the weather heads to winter. However, I am guessing that the rainfall is still below normal for us here in the Sth Waikato.

i was going back through some posts made by "revered" members here and I will post a few...
Paul Mallinson wrote: Sat 15/03/2008 19:25 [When's it going to rain?]
don't think we have many indicators that can we can rely on heavily to tell us what's going to happen - although the climatological people at NIWA are more informed than I on seasonal stuff. Anyway, I have noticed in other years that when a dry period ends it does start to rain more frequently -sometimes as someone has mentioned you get a big event perhaps to kick it off??

Two things come to mind. The first is that the long wave pattern around the hemisphere which gets blocked (depending on the number of large scale waves around the hemisphere) can give us these dry periods when we are under a planetary scale ridge. When the long waves change to another pattern you start to get the travelling weather systems again. The other thought is that in summer, the sub tropical ridge moves south to lie over our latitudes. It has done so repeatedly for some time now - some years more than others. But as the seasons change and the sun moves to more northerly latitudes, this eventually has to change and the ridge position moves back to the north and once again we get the travelling lows and fronts in the westerlies.

Paul
Manukau heads observer wrote: Sun 16/03/2008 08:12 [When's it going to rain?]
yes, we might just have to wait until mid april for the westerly lows and fronts to come back?
or maybe before then a TC might pay us a visit...but thats a hit and miss thing at the best of times!
NZStorm wrote: Sun 16/03/2008 09:56 [When's it going to rain?]
With the remnants of La Nina I suspect we will be waiting untill June until we get the disturbed westerly pattern setting in.
I know the SWest cold fronts have started coming through but not reaching the NI much.

The stability to the weather has meant that the initially visible recent wet patterns in the Tasman have dried up and dispersed as they reach the NI - except for the far north. We have hardly had much wind to speak of 35kms/hr max locally and a lot of cloudless or hazy high cloud days and beautiful sunsets.

Will the SW cold fronts soon start marching up the NI bringing snow to the high country and then the weather settle more into a Northerly - Westerly - Southerly pattern of winter?

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RWood
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Re: Long Calm Autumn in Mid NI

Unread post by RWood »

Despite the settled conditions and more sunny days the "dry" has been long gone here - downpours at the end of March and April, plus a few lesser boosts this month have us running at well over 100mm above the YTD average. So the "dried up" scenario has not applied here, and the far North is not the only exception.
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Re: Long Calm Autumn in Mid NI

Unread post by Myself »

Yes, it's quite hard to imagine the state of the grass back in January right now. It's also hard to remember exactly when the grass started looking green after the dry summer.
Easter weekend was very warm and dry, but I think things were certainly not so brown then.
Certainly if you asked people if they thought this year had been wet, I don't think they would say so. As well as being up on rainfall we are also up on sunshine hours (by about 10% ish) and presumably temperature also. Is this what global warming was supposed to do?
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Re: Long Calm Autumn in Mid NI

Unread post by Manukau heads obs »

we are needing a bit more rain (and warm rain) here, again, to kick things along again
northland has been in the firing line with the la nina easterlies back again, but like the summer, auckland and the waikato have missed out again...so far...
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RWood
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Re: Long Calm Autumn in Mid NI

Unread post by RWood »

Myself wrote:Yes, it's quite hard to imagine the state of the grass back in January right now. It's also hard to remember exactly when the grass started looking green after the dry summer.
Easter weekend was very warm and dry, but I think things were certainly not so brown then.
Certainly if you asked people if they thought this year had been wet, I don't think they would say so. As well as being up on rainfall we are also up on sunshine hours (by about 10% ish) and presumably temperature also. Is this what global warming was supposed to do?
Just a reasonable set of effects within the La Nina range. While it has been wetter than average, it hasn't been rainier, i.e. the number of "wet" days is average or below (below till mid-April, a bit higher since). The sunshine surplus has been quite common in the last 10+ years.
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