NZ Weather Forum

Some kind of convergence showers to the NE and east from here at the moment looking very dark and shafty, one is heading inland towards Rangiora.
The radar at 5pm doesnt do justice as to how heavy the showers are, as the one i had before was short but rather heavy.
Shower clouds now coming in from a more Easterly direction not SE and the wind is Southerly.

Dry as a bone in town, as it has been all day

Yeah, only a few spits as I was coming back into take late this arvo, but quite abit more out on BP, + snow still lying above about 500m. (quite a good coating)

Random light showers at times here today, had a small hail shower a little earlier, lasted for a few minutes.

Heavy Graupel coming down here starting to get white and been going for a good 5-6 minutes, coming down in waves.
Drains overflowing too .

Apparently had a good snow shower at 3pm (while I was still at school ) but a bit of grapel - I think - (hard snowy stuff, not hail, and not snow) - BTW someone please confirm if this is what it is - on way home at 4.45 and kids got excited. Don't think I'll be lucky enough to score a snow day tomorrow. According to local knowledge last year was first time no snow day declared in a very long time. FYI - Snow day is a day when school is closed but govt still pays your wages

Jasestrm wrote:Heavy Graupel coming down here starting to get white and been going for a good 5-6 minutes, coming down in waves.
Drains overflowing too .

Amazing considering here today we have not had a single shower and there has not been a breath of wind all day. Still as outside still! Blue skies has interesting weather forecast for us later in the week.

Well that was certainly a good shower of graupel and rain lasted around 8 minutes on and off heavy stuff.
Its certainly cold out there but not freezing and wind is now Easterly, makes me think it must be southerly higher up for these icy showers to be pummeling on through.
Very isolated to the north, i havnt seen this sort of situation in a long time normally its christchurch getting these kind of showers and nothing out this way.
Ice melted too quickly for any drifts plus the ground was already wet from showers beforehand around 7pm.
Graupel is a form of tiny hail although some believe its intermixed sleet/hail or snizzle .

Yeah no showers here in Christchurch all day.. just cold and cloudy.
Nothing to speak of tonight either, and the showers seem to be hovering over north Canterbury way.
Checked the rain radar just then and see there are some beefy showers to the South of here. and if they come in it will be interesting.

its really interesting to see the sheltering effect of the Port Hills on the radar throughout the day from earlier when it was SE to now with the change to E.

3 deg here in rangiora with heavy showers all night but now with lots of big sleet.

hokimalone wrote:its really interesting to see the sheltering effect of the Port Hills on the radar throughout the day from earlier when it was SE to now with the change to E.

Something to do with lack of wind? witch is why showers are only developing further north?

Is anyone having trouble getting to the crt website?

Hence why there's no wind is because of the sheltering affect .
It sure is cold out there now, wind is light havnt had any shower activity since the graupel shower before.
Yes Melja i am having trouble too.

There's no wind because there's (almost) no gradient, not because of sheltering.

Jasestrm wrote:Graupel is a form of tiny hail although some believe its intermixed sleet/hail or snizzle .

Graupel is the german word for what is technically called snow pellets, more commonly called soft hail. It occurs when ice forms on a snowflake, so the "hail stone" or pellet, has a snow flake core. This compares with the more classic hail stone which is solid ice. Snow pellets typically break up and smash when they hit things, true hail will often bounce off.

The shower I had earlier was definitely small hail, not graupel. It was interesting a few weeks ago in one of the many cold outbreaks we have had so far this winter to observe graupel and small hail at the same time coming from the same shower cloud, something which I think must be rather unusual as they have different formation mechanisms.

I;m not sure why the CRT site is down at present, but it should be back up in the morning.

Ah ok good explanation there Tony i didnt know that, perhaps it was more hail here then earlier although it was very tiny and didnt seem to bounce although i think thats because the grounds wet.
Just had a good heavy shower again with some sleet intermixed briefly and lasted a good 10-15 minutes so quite a big shower.
11pm radar suggests it is clipping parts of eastern Christchurch now.

Showers continued falling steady on the roof until around 2am as it kept waking me up, 16mm in the gauge since 7pm on Sunday night and only 4mm had fallen up until 10am yesterday.
Sounds like you were quite right Mark residents on stand by for evacuation near Gisbourne apon fears of low lying floods from rivers, and several roads now being closed too.

Brief shower ot two, very brief in the last hour. The temp is only 2 degrees which is very strange. Dead still as it has been for the past 72 hours or so. Its very strange to think only on 2 degrees with no breeze at all and drizzly showers about. That to me should indicate snow falling at the top of the port hills. Yet nothing is forecast or picked up by on models. See Blue skies forecasting snow to sea level Sunday. I think CHCH will see some dent rain Friday and Saturday with snow to around 200-300m at this stage. Maybe very briefly to 100m on the Saturday at the back end of the front. Gisborne still recording steady rain. They should see at least shower activity until at least Wednesday night before rain moves in again on Thursday night/ Friday Morning. Civil defence will probably need to stay on the look out im picking. Looks to be very heavy little band in western Northland atm. Red blotch showing

I recorded 3.2mm of rain for the last 2 days in rain-gauge at St John of God hospital in Halswell so there must of been some rain in SW Christchurch. I noticed that Jeff Northcote recorded nothing at all.

JohnGaul
NZThS

I have only noticed 2 very brief drizzly showers and i live in Halswell....Im in agreeance with Jeffs station interms of what i have seen.

Immmmmmmmm interesting

JohnGaul
NZThS

Actually i think you'll find jeff got 1.0mm. In St Albans we had a couple of beefy showers overnight