Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

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jamie
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by jamie »

I was just thinking damn i knew i should have gone to auckland for the night...but looking at the radar it looks like the Waikato's turn shortly any ways. More lumpy shower clouds right on the coast :)

What do people think the chances of waking up to clear skies and white mountain tops? Or would it all be melted? I cant get over the fact that the Kaimai road is shut. 2 degrees out there now. should get some good hail shortly
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by ricky »

Hailed upon in the spa pool.. that was fantastic! :)

Rodalco gets all the fun jobs.. HV and control systems, two of my favourite things oh and lightning of course, any idea what was hit? or was something induced?
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David
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by David »

Had a roll of thunder to the south a short time ago, moderate to heavy rain for the last 10minutes now, intermingled with barrages of tiny hail (about 1mm size).

A lot of rain overnight, 16mm since 6pm yesterday.
Low was 4.0C here about the time there was graupel showers yesterday evening.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

j--me--h wrote:I cant get over the fact that the Kaimai road is shut.
I was in the group of 3 cars that were the last over apparently. It was 3 to 5 cm deep, very slushy, but extremely slippery. From memory the road summit there is 500m, so the settled snow would have been down to about 400m, with say 5cm at 500m.

The Mamaku's had more snow, but the road isn't as steep , they had grit on the road and it seemed to be melting ok. The Kaimai's seemed to be more icy, like small hail rather than snow perhaps?
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by jamie »

had a good frost here this morning. Stuck around for quite a while. No snow on Pirongia this morn. Sun was facing the wrong way to see if snow was on Te Aroha.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by NZstorm »

Snowed in at Whakapapa Village with lots of wind. Had about 15cm snow here.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by Vertigo »

whats wrong with the auckland radar? not getting much of anything from it, despite the heavy rain this morning in auckland.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by Peter »

Vertigo wrote:whats wrong with the auckland radar? not getting much of anything from it, despite the heavy rain this morning in auckland.
Doesn't seem to have been working since about 6pm last night - from 5pm to 6pm scan, all of a sudden all the CB activity just disappeared from the screen
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by David »

After doing some internet browsing, I'm more convinced it was sleet showers here yesterday evening and not graupel.
Graupel is apparently snow pellets, and although there were hailstones coming down at times, the rain drops were slushy/soft/icy, not pellets.

This is quite a conundrum to me, what to record this precipitation as. #-o
It was 4C at the time so it was cold enough for sleet.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by Michael »

Last night on the deck they were like small steelies ie ball bearings 1/2 size of marbles.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by jamie »

David wrote:After doing some internet browsing, I'm more convinced it was sleet showers here yesterday evening and not graupel.
Graupel is apparently snow pellets, and although there were hailstones coming down at times, the rain drops were slushy/soft/icy, not pellets.

This is quite a conundrum to me, what to record this precipitation as. #-o
It was 4C at the time so it was cold enough for sleet.
Yes David im the same. We were getting the hail which was just frozen rain drops really. The tiny pallets. Then while i was at the rugby game in temple view it changed shape and hardness to a softish, flat wide ice crytal. Never seen hail like it before and i too have done research and have been lead to think it was sleet.

Talking to my uncle who is a cop. He was one of the police that shut the Kaimai road. He said it was just very deep hail that froze to the road. Not snow as some people had thought. He said it was so icy it was virtually impossible to drive and stand on and there were numerous minor crashes.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by spwill »

This is quite a conundrum to me, what to record this precipitation as.
It was 4C at the time so it was cold enough for sleet
Sleet in Auckland City would have shown up as flurries on higher ground like the Waitaks and the Bombays, I've heard no reports of snow flurries in the Ak province area.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by spike_01 »

The Tararuas have just cleared and got quite a covering..

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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

j--me--h wrote:Talking to my uncle who is a cop. He was one of the police that shut the Kaimai road. He said it was just very deep hail that froze to the road. Not snow as some people had thought. He said it was so icy it was virtually impossible to drive and stand on and there were numerous minor crashes.
I did comment earlier that the "Snow" on the Kaimais was more like ice, not melting and slippery. Sure looked like snow though, but it was night. Media reported it was snow not ice that closed the road.

I can't help wondering if the full Shell petrol tanker that stopped just slightly on the Matamata side of the summit (where the spring & safe parking is) due to concerns about the lack of traction continued on or not. He'd had wheel spinning problems climbing up and didn't want to drive down the steeper side for fear of having a potentially very nasty fatal accident on the extremely slippery road. Police made the right call closing the road.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by TokWW »

Yes, we had about 2" of hail in areas in Tokoroa and it finished with 5mins of light snow in the still cold air. Wind went from NW to South very quickly, the temp dropped from 5 to 0.8 just as quick! You could not see the snow on the ground for the hail. It then froze and agglommerated. then this morning, to top it off, there was a frost on the top! Very icy on hard surfaces last night.

Nice pic of Mt Holdsworth? in the Tararuas there Spike... Mitre Peak probably looked similar! I think I got those right way round...

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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by NZstorm »

After doing some internet browsing, I'm more convinced it was sleet showers here yesterday evening and not graupel.
Graupel is apparently snow pellets, and although there were hailstones coming down at times, the rain drops were slushy/soft/icy, not pellets.
It wasn't cold enough in Auckland for sleet or snow pellets yesterday. Wet hail can look a lot like sleet.


Back in Auckland from a great snow chase to Ohakune to Whakapapa Village. I had to borrow a shovel to dig the car out of the snow today as it was caught in a 50cm drift when parked overnight!

Pic here of blizzard like showers yesterday afternoon.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by NZstorm »

It wasn't cold enough in Auckland for sleet or snow pellets yesterday.
Just add that the freezing level over Auckland on last nights sounding was close to the 900m mark. Fairly well cancels out wintry precip around here other than hail.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by David »

NZstorm wrote:
It wasn't cold enough in Auckland for sleet or snow pellets yesterday.
Just add that the freezing level over Auckland on last nights sounding was close to the 900m mark. Fairly well cancels out wintry precip around here other than hail.
So I guess it was a mix of normal hard hailstones and soft melting hailstones that broke up on impact then?
That seems to be the only explanation for the soft rain/ice drops.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by TonyT »

There's several different types of hail. (And, although they need very cold temperatures, several different types of icey precipitation which are not hail nor snow either - try googling snow grains, snow prisms etc ).
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by NZ Thunderstorm Soc »

TonyT wrote:There's several different types of hail. (And, although they need very cold temperatures, several different types of icey precipitation which are not hail nor snow either - try googling snow grains, snow prisms etc ).
YES. Different types of snow? Yesterday's snow I found was quite mushy, especially as it was driven around by the wind and when it came onto rain, by 11pm, most of it had melted. 1.5cm here at it's thichness.
This was unlike the last snowfall.

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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by RWood »

Prisms occur in ultracold spots like the South Pole and Vostok, I understand.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by David »

Was not expecting a low of 0.2 here!! Even the airport got down to 2 degrees. Very calm night and morning here - averaging 0km/h and max gust last hour 5km/h. And yet it has been gusting 30 knots this morning at Brian's place!

Should be a series of frosty nights on the way for areas south of and in some areas of Auckland.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by Manukau heads obs »

surprisingly heavy and squally shower going through here now....heading for the big smoke...
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by Willoughby »

Yes biggest frost so far this year here in Hamilton - I dropped to -2.1C at 4.38am.

The temperature isn't fearing much better now with 4.5C and showers beginning.
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Re: Severe Weather - N/Island - Early July

Unread post by Michael »

Its colder than Saturday here.
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