NZ Weather Forum

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4676683a11.html

Good grief! It's the central pressure of the anticyclone that is supposed to be record-breaking - not the "wild weather"!

Probably refering to the pressure gradient caused from the intense high bringing the rain etc.

Yes I thought that headline was reflective of some of the sensationalist and sometimes disgracefully informed reporting we have been seeign at times lately

actualy you are missing the point I think
when you get a very big high pressure system like that, it can create extreme weather conditons around its permiter (i.e by causing blocking, lots of moisture feed, etc)

No, the point has not been missed. There will be nothing exceptional about the winds or rain in the affected areas - as BobMcD. said in the article, Fiordland is used to such rainfalls, New Orleans isn't. It's simply a very bad headline, designed to sell a few more copies of papers or get more online attention.

Trouble around the periphery does not constitute record-breaking. Unless rainfalls somewhere top about 600mm or winds blast at over 160kph there will be nothing exceptional about the weather in Fiordland/Westland/inland Canty.

It is simply a sensationalist headline, hoping to ride on the coattails of recent weather publicity.

well said RWood

Um they do expect 500mm+ in those areas so i dont no about you but thats exceptional and does not happen very often.

The 500 is a "could" for the whole event over about 3-4 days (see MetService warning). Considering the 1-day record is 682mm and the 2-day 1049mm, "exceptional" is not appropriate.

Yes but they were 14 years ago! and i cant find once at arthurs pass since 2003 that they have had 500mm+ in one event, so if it happens every year then no its not exceptional but it doesnt happen all that often, rarely does this kind rain event happen in the alps! it may happen in south westland but not the alps further north.

Arthurs Pass township is slightly east of the divide and sees significantly less than the main divide even though it is just down the road. The measure an annual average up to (or even more than) 10,000mm on the Divide, I understand its a few thousand less for the village. And you go just 10km further east to bealy and its less than 2000mm.

So a warning of 500mm over a few days on the main divide is not unusual, especially in sping (what the locals call the "monsoon season"!)

Just so. On the upwind side of the divide, there's a cluster of recorders in the catchment south/SE of Hokitika with means ranging up to 11,500+mm/year at the Cropp River "waterfall" site. That is not South Westland, either.

http://www.metservice.com/default/index ... es&pr=1016

Now they are calling it amazing not exceptional and note they say a good amount of it will fall on the eastern flanks of the canterbury alps so if we see 350-400mm fall that the arthurs pass web site is expecting then this is exceptional rain for them.

Around and around waiting for the counter reply.!!

Michael wrote:Probably refering to the pressure gradient caused from the intense high bringing the rain etc.

I would in some ways agree with Michael on this one
About the article, you would have to ask, Micheal Forbes, the writer of the article, why the intense pressure of the anticyclone is the cause of the heavy rain?
Well he wrote it

JohnGaul
NZTS

The Met. headline should not have used "amazing" to describe 500mm in 2-3 days in the area referred to. As for Arthurs Pass, the site that has records from 1906 has recorded as much as 1418mm in a month and although 350-400mm in the timespan given would be very high, it would certainly not be "amazing" or "record-breaking". I'm not going to expend my time downloading the data just to work out the return period for such an event. Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.

I don't think it's worth the time to worry over the semantics between 'very high' and 'amazing'.

Can anyone tell me - are we (inner Pelorus Sound) the only ones getting rain.
Had 44mm thus far and still raining, nothing heavy (for us) but steady rain.
My www sites are showing rain on West Coast - but nothing great at this stage, and beggar all else where ???
Even the rain radar dosn't show us having rain of that amount ???

If you look at this site you will indeed see you are not the only one with rain.

http://www.crc.govt.nz/Our+Environment/ ... -table.htm

Thanx Gary
Another site to my collection !!!!
Don't supose you have other Enviroment locations ???

the sounds hills would block low level rain from the wellington radar too I would think (i.e rain from low cloud)

A lesson in point for those who don't understand the effect of the Main Divide

http://www.wcrc.govt.nz/river_level_rai ... ummary.htm shows the Cropp River (one of the sites mentioned earlier in this thread) with 559mm and counting from this event. Falls of up to even 1000mm a week can occur at this site, esepcially during the spring norwest season, which we appear to be in now.

Over the Main Divide and a bit further north, we have Arthurs Pass village. Just 4km east but only 155mm so far in the same system. To the south, also close to the Main Divide, Mt Cook has just 75mm

In recent years 3 metre snow dumps in a day or two are not uncommon high on the main divide. This is why the Franz and Fox glaciers are able to advance while east of the divide retreat continues with haste

While these totals seem huge to townies who don't know the Southern Alps, they are reasonably common in the mountains (as mentioned especially in spring) and certainly nothing for the media to get hysterical about and compare to destructive hurricanes (for eg)

Should be some good infill for the lakes though, with more to come when the snow thaws.

There was a record high presure reading (approaching 1040hPa) on Western Australia's south coast, at Esperance, recently. There was also a record low temp (for WA) of -7.2 degrees at Eyre a few hundred kms from Esperance around the same time.

I think it was basicly that same high that gave eastern NI record high baro?

I see the metservice weather warnings says:

This will
bring rainfall totals to 650-750mm in some places for this event

to my thinking, I think it was premature and over the top to say that the news headline was grossly misleading

Manukau heads observer wrote:I see the metservice weather warnings says:

This will
bring rainfall totals to 650-750mm in some places for this event

to my thinking, I think it was premature and over the top to say that the news headline was grossly misleading

The headline clearly said that the "wild weather" could be record-breaking. The body of the article said no such thing. That's misleading - and that's simply Logic 101 and English 101, as far as I'm concerned. It's all part of the hype machine.