spwill wrote:A Fine morning here and no early fog seen at all.
An interesting day for the SouthIsland
Just advective sea-fog - watched it roll in about 7am, started to clear about an hour ago here.
Hi Nev
Would this be the same bizarre fog that has just made breaking news over on Weather Watch and is rolling into places like Takapuna etc... anyway... I'm still learning weather... take care.
Interesting... today I have read the weather been described as being freakish and bizzare (chuckle) nice one Phil anyway...
Lightning in NZ The right terminology lends a hint as to the nature of the different forms.
A Vertigo Quote.
that fog looks awesome. i just took a very similar pic to that of spwill's but with only my 3.2mp phone camera the quality inst worth the effort of putting it on here.
Paul Mallinson wrote:Yes perhaps Tony, but it may also be originating in our own back yard. Our latest fine scale analysis (hand drawn) reveals a tremendous pressure gradient across and to the east of the Southern Alps and stations like our Pukaki one area starting to gust to 52kts at 3pm and is now 59kt at 4pm. Mid Dome (at 1230m) in inland Souhtland is gusting 77kts at 3pm and at 85kts at 4pm. Gore 51kts at 2pm. So there must be some awefully strong winds out there is places.
Paul
Yes i think you will find its coming from just east of the alps, we have had many very silty floods and its left this silt all over the now mostly dry river beds and also there has been a very quick loss of snow on the hills to the east of the alps in the past week with very little wind so could this now dry surface be lossing all of the dust trapped under winter snow ? after all they are just big heaps of dusty shingle.
Well thats what i think it is and my truck is covered in a thick layer of grey dust.
TonyT wrote:That may be adding to it Paul, but the dust was already thick in the sky at dawn today, before the winds got that strong.
If you look at the arthurs pass w/s it shows that it has been windy from the NW from late last night in fact the strongest gust today was 87kph at 5:18 this morning and sundays was 66kph around 11pm while its not that strong it would be much stronger in the big open valleys.
Tony explaind RE; dust Richard in a previous post on page 4.
Yes alot of thick dust about today, i did think for a minute it may have been some fog or smog this morning, but yes that dust was around from very early hours and it was calm as, so yeah a werid day weather wise.
Currently 21.2C in my area of town with DP of 3.4 so humidity not that high.
It is the same dust Tornadotim which can be seen on the photo of the fog at the top of this page.
Very simular to what was seen in our skies today, there aint no dusty valleys around Auckland is there.
However i think the contribution of the dust from central Australia and the high country of Canterbury made it that much very thicker than normal.
Its the first time ive seen it like that, you certainly dont see it like that even during summer.
It was a shame we couldnt reach high temperatures here today, however i think the overnight low might be around 15-17C.
Friday has a simular story by the looks.
Those pics are no where as bad as here today, i couldn't see the maintains 20km away,but the other odd thing is ive chatting on line with people from Victoria this afternoon and none of then knew of any dust passing over from South Aust.
Yes dust blows over from Ozzie a lot, but 99% of it falls within precipitation on the west side,did it not rain on the west coast today to wash any dust out.
It didnt come from the intreior South Island, i'm thinking now that Tony maybe right in that it must have come from oz but must have pasted over Victoria during the darkess hours.The other clue is its been consistent all day,if it had been from inland South Ialand it wouldnt have been so.
Still over 20 degrees here at the moment. 20.2 to be exact. I see Alexandra got to a whopping 29 degrees today! Yes it was a pitty we had the haze/dust. I would say we would have pushed Alexandra otherwise. Yes looks like warm weather returning for the weekend!! So far in september = 6 days over 20 degrees this month and not a millimetre of rain recorded.
Reporting Live from Southern Christchurch
Leighton Thomas
We are getting hit by a huge NW storm at the moment. Lots of damage around the bay...with a power line down, trees down, broken branches and a boat house that has lost its roof.
Spectacular uplifts on the harbour.
Very exciting but equally dangerous.
Winds have really picked up in the last 15mins, some rather strong gusts out there at the moment. Currently 19 degrees. Maybe the gales from Otago have moved further north, see what eventuates.
Reporting Live from Southern Christchurch
Leighton Thomas
Have to say that yesterday arvo's fog certainly looked quite 'bizarre' from here. Watched it rolling in over our N'ern beaches and completely blanketed the NW'ern end of Waiheke by about about 4:30pm, with only the tips of hills visible. Looking from higher up, all I could see of the city was the top of the Sky-tower protruding from a thick, white cloud. By sunset it turned to pea-soup here, but cleared less than 2 hours later. Karen suggested that it had probably been lurking out in the Gulf all day and just needed that E'ly breeze (or NE sea-breeze here) to bring it in.
Re the haze, I recall seeing pics from SA a few days ago where looking at the afternoon sun was more like looking at the moon, the dust was that thick. However, it might also be worth mentioning the 60 odd bushfires that about 800 fire-fighters have been battling around the NSW N'ern and S'ern coasts over the weekend, one of which had been burning since late August. I'm sure they would've also been a major contributor to yesterday's haze here.
Overcast and slightly foggy here, mild temps.
Happy Birthday Paul Mallinson, I hope you have a great birthday!
Make sure the Metservice do something for ya, perhaps throw you a thunderstorm!
Yes some of those photos from the SA crew were quite spectacular Nev.. as was the sunset last night (not that you'd have seen much due to the fog).. a deep blood red right on the termination line, only time I've seen ones like that are due to dust/fire smoke. Didnt manage to capture any images as I was away from home without the gear but it was very impressive.
Looks to me like down here we're looking down the barrel of no rain whatsoever for the month of September. Not what the cockies want to hear at all....
anyway... 
I hope you have a great birthday! 
