The Big Blow 1975

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The Big Blow 1975

Unread post by NZ Thunderstorm Soc »

Coming up to the 34th anniversary of the destructive, hurricane force winds that blew over Canterbury early in the morning of August the first. I remember it well. :eek:

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Re: The Big Blow 1975

Unread post by Razor »

Good metservice write up of that day here

http://blog.metservice.com/pages/the-gr ... gust-1975/
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Re: The Big Blow 1975

Unread post by Richard »

An amazingly powerful wind that was,i remember my parents just bought a new oven and only just taken the old one outside the day before,in the morning the old oven was laying on its side,the power of the wind in incredible.I remember also that the wind died around 12.00 pm and then it poured down with a heavy rain from the NW.
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Re: The Big Blow 1975

Unread post by NZ Thunderstorm Soc »

I see on the TV One news this evening about a strong wind storm moving through Levin, this time last year.
Even though, being destructive, it probably wasn't as damaging as the 1975, "Big Blow".
Gusts up to 93 knots were recorded at Harewood airport and Mt John in the Mackenzie recorded gusts up to 104 knots. Just about much of the Balmoral forest got flattened.
I was driving a train up from Timaru that morning, but we only got as far as Hinds.
Trees, wheat silos, telegraph poles were all blowing across the line plus lots of other rubbish. I think I wrote about this story, somewhere else on the forum a few years back.
The damage from the winds, the next day was quite devastating. 7 power pylons near the upper Selwyn River came down.

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Re: The Big Blow 1975

Unread post by RWood »

15 years later one could still see debris from the thousands of trees that were blown over.

It was a time when a new breathless style of reporting occurred was introduced in the old NZBC and state TV channels. I remember an excitable reporter who had a notion that the gales were concentrated in a single moving entity, and an exasperated Met office forecaster trying to explain to him/her that "nothing was going anywhere", in effect.

Highest reported gust was 105kts on the Kaikoura peninsula, with winds satisfying the hurricane force definition in areas ranging from Timaru to southern Wairarapa. Wellington had some very strong gusts overnight, but little damage as far as I can recall.
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Re: The Big Blow 1975

Unread post by Manukau heads obs »

interesting how the weather pattern is similar at the moment
low to the north, ridge under that, procession of fronts in a NW flow over the SI
just not as intense a low pressure system in the southern ocean
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