Questions about MetService

[Lacertae]

An other question : do you know why the Invercargill and sometimes New Plymouth radars are not showing anything ?

[Razor]

Razor, first you worry when the met service is behind in the forecasts, then you worry when they are updating the forecast too frequently?

Not sure where I worried about them being 'behind' MHO....the angle is just about the constant changes

[Manukau heads obs]

you often post about the forecast being behind reality Razor

re the invercargill and new plymouth radars.....they do not operate when a ballon is put up from that site (i.e they are used instead to track the ballon)

[Razor]

MHO, I don't want to make an arguement of this, in the past I have criticised the metservice website for failing to cope with demand and stay 'live' when it is under high demand

I've never specifically thought I was having a crack for them being "behind".

All we ask for is a professionally delivered online website service that is appropriate to the good folk of NZ

[Vertigo]

lets be honest here, metservice will only release radar images updated as infrequently as they can get away with. joe public will only look at an image once in a blue moon anyway, so so long as its not 6 hours out of date, he wont notice. we do, because we know what we are looking for, and require a bit more. thats why the MS big wigs charge for it, because they know can get away with it, the public wont care.

[Razor]

lets be honest here, metservice will only release radar images updated as infrequently as they can get away with. joe public will only look at an image once in a blue moon anyway, so so long as its not 6 hours out of date, he wont notice. we do, because we know what we are looking for, and require a bit more. thats why the MS big wigs charge for it, because they know can get away with it, the public wont care.

At least those of us who have Sky get the updated radar on a 15 min basis

[Vertigo]

i have sky too, its just not convenient enough for me to use it.

[NZstorm]

The surface observations should be available every hour rather than 3hrs.

[jamie]

Q1. If they dont want to put up radar images frequently for free... what is stopping them doing every 1 hour still but having higher resolution images? better than nothing i suppose.

Q2. Will MetService and Skytv ever produce a weather channel? one like the US one and here in australia on foxtel.

Q3. why are surface obs only updated every 3 hours and some things every 1 hour? Us folk on here have a better recored for the public to see for free than MetService. there are so many online weather stations (some being a bit strange in readings) producing suface obs far greater than we can retrive off metservice. To me this is the biggest letdown from metservice. updates of wind, temp and all the other surface obs should be for every town and city in NZ and updated atleast 3 times an hour.

With more free data online surely it can only be a good thing. having all that more data online and accessible would raise the awearness of the public during storms. Take for example that person killed on the horse last year during a strom near Dargaville??. Yes they ignored the sever thunderstorm warning out but how often are thunderstorms hit and miss and often dont eventuate because they are so hard to forecast. Having radar images at high resolution and updated frequently could surley only save lives and raise awearness of the weather.

Gee i hope someone from the government or high up in metservice is reading this topic.

[03Stormchaser]

Who is the minister for the 'metservice' if there even is such a thing?? A guess would be its the enviromental minister.

[Kim]

The Metservice appears to within the Ministry of Transport

"While the Ministry is primarily a policy and monitoring agency, it is responsible for some operational functions including:
administering a contract with the Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited (MetService) for the provision of a public weather warning and forecast service."

http://www.transport.govt.nz/nature-and ... nctions-1/

Steven Joyce is the Minister http://beehive.govt.nz/minister/steven+joyce

[Willoughby]

Who is the minister for the 'metservice' if there even is such a thing?? A guess would be its the enviromental minister.

Ministry of State Owned Enterprises - Simon Power

Did a little digging and according to MetService's MetConnect page, the rain-radar imagery updates every 7.5 to 15 minutes.

Yeah though i'm pretty sure the forecasters there view the radar every 7.5 minutes - not sure about MetConnect.

[Vertigo]

thats similar to the american radar data isnt it? 5 minutes?

[Nev]

Did a little digging and according to MetService's MetConnect page, the rain-radar imagery updates every 7.5 to 15 minutes.

Yeah though i'm pretty sure the forecasters there view the radar every 7.5 minutes - not sure about MetConnect.

Yes, might even be able to view while performing the scan, but at any one time it would either be the long-range non-doppler scan or the shorter range full doppler scan, which each take about 7.5 minutes to complete, hence the separate or combined high-resolution images all taking 15 minutes to update.

Btw, the Government currently accounts for only about one half of MetService's revenue. As already mentioned, although wholly owned by the Government, MetService as an SOE is required by legislation to operate in the same manner as private sector companies and return a profit. The Government simply becomes just another client. The original intention being that MetService would 'pay it's own way', rather than be a burden to the tax-payer.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

I see MetService Website is down
I also see that this my 5000th post.
I must thank all those that have out up my postings over the last 6 odd years.
Thankyou.

JohnGaul
NZThS

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

It's still off-line??
Can't access it at all

JohnGaul
NZThS

[David]

It's still off-line??
Can't access it at all

Works fine for me.

[CHCH Weather Chaser]

I Havent been able to get on the Metservice site either John. Dont worry its not just you! Maybe its us Cantabrians that cant get online for some reason....

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Must be just then local, Mark

JohnGaul
NZThS

[Philip Duncan]

Both MetService and MetConnect sites are offline. I haven't been given an ETA when it'll be fixed but I know they've been on to it since about 3pm. Always happens on days when you need the radar most!! Such is life!

[melja]

No go in rangiora sh#t service really as on big weather days it goes down.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Both MetService and MetConnect sites are offline. I haven't been given an ETA when it'll be fixed but I know they've been on to it since about 3pm. Always happens on days when you need the radar most!! Such is life!

Thanks Phil.
There have been interesting clouds here today, wondering whether or not they have been shower developing/producing as origionally what was forecasted for here?
Wanting to check radar

JohnGaul
NZThS

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Back on line

Horrah

JohnGaul
NZThS

[Storm Struck]

Same here it was very annoying having the radar down as i wanted to check to see if there were any showers about.
Around 6pm this evening there was a convergence line towards the W-SW direction which looked like it had some heavy precipitation coming down from it.
Anyway i used the 3 hourly radar on metvuw which was the 4pm one, we really do need another source for rain radars when MS decides to go down again.
Also nice to see the NOAA sattelite images are back online, as they have been down since xmas eve.
I quite enjoy looking at NOAA as the qaulity of CB clouds shows up really well.
Cheers
Jason.

[David]

Anyway i used the 3 hourly radar on metvuw which was the 4pm one, we really do need another source for rain radars when MS decides to go down again.

How can it have been their site if I had uninterrupted easy access all afternoon?