Canterbury Thunderstorms - 14th December 2009

[Weetbicks]

I headed out on my bicycle (yes...) around 3:30, went out mcleans island road out the back there, then down south to west coast road and just criss crossing around that area for a while, before heading back up round the back of the airport. Jase if you saw a stupid person in an orange jacket then that was me

No sign of hail for me which was good, tho was pretty chilly once the gust front came thru and plenty of rain.

Anyways, here are some pics:

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[Weetbicks]

A few more picks of the bunch..

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[Chris Raine]

11 mm in an hour at Oamaru by 7.30pm , Thunderstorm now eased 16mm in the gauge for the 24 hour period so far.Cool 7.5 degrees

[Manukau heads obs]

great photos guys, loved the funnel cloud photo

squally heavy shower through here now too....spring is back for a bit

[Dale]

Dammit I knew I should have stayed down in Woolston/Sumner until at least tomorrow morning, would have been my ultimate xmas pressie! I give myself the kiss of death everytime I leave somewhere to come back to Akl, there is a storm the next day! Argh!

Rant over but fantastic rundown and real-time obs & photos of the day to all involved, its been a pleasure to sift through all pages so far

[spwill]

Have been in Dunedin for the weekend, had the opportunity to do a quick storm chase from Chch airport mid afternoon.
Watched a nice storm out Darfield way, great lightning, a mix of heavy rain /hail, my first Canterbury Storm chase, had fun.
A few pics,

[tgsnoopy]

Wow, well done guys... especially good luck spwill!

There is a remote possibility up this way in my patch tomorrow, I'm not holding my breath... But then I'll be working with the boss in the morning... So I suppose it'll go off then when I can't get out there.

[Nev]

Some cool pics there guys

Interesting little NZPA story that's doing the rounds in the main papers atm - includes a 'tornado' reported near Springfield and/or a funnel-cloud which may have reached the ground?

'Hundreds of lightning strikes hit Canterbury'

[Willoughby]

Some awesome photos here guys especially from Rolleston, Karsh! By the look of these photos from you guys it must be the best thunderstorm event to hit Canterbury for some time...!

[mikestormchaser]

Yes very nice looking pictures guys! great to see
Unfortunately i missed alot of te action typical being at work, but its a shame i cant just take a day off for it
Roll on the xmas holidays and ill have 3 weeks being free to chase from 18th dec!!
Anyways Leighton and I decided to head out and see what we could get around 5pm as we heard there was a major storm going to hit darfeild at 5 15pm
As we drove south towards ashburton we encounted some very heavy sporadic rain and one big flash right above going down main south road..
Looked rather bright towards darfield way so we decided not to go inland and stick to heading to ashburton, wasn't long until we turned back as there wasn't much happening as we kept travelling.
Oh well hopefully next time ill be free to just go out and not MISS anything! grr
But great day none the less thunderstorms

[Lacertae]

All right, excitement and fatigue (I only had 4 hours of sleep the night before) did bring confusion to my mind ...
There were 2 funnel clouds, or the same twice. I'm not sure what's the procedure in meteorology around that, I'll let you deal with it.
The following pictures are of the 1st funnel and it was the most "active" of the 2. Unfortunately I do not have any video footage of it as I was calling Andrew (I don't really know why I've done that to be honest ...). However I clearly remember that moment as being the closest to the ground, but as I do not have any photographic proof we will keep calling it a funnel cloud and not a tornado.

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Lessons for the next chasing : keep cool, do not call the mates and keep filming ALL the time, bugger the pics !

Anyway, once I was back to my camera I restarted a video in case an other funnel cloud would appear. And for a few seconds ... an other funnel cloud appeared ! I'm not quite sure if the first one ever disappeared or not ... doesn't matter much.

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And then I tried to see what the cell was doing and where the updraft was gone, but the wind wasn't the same anymore and I couldn't spot any rotation. Plus the hail finally caught me up and I stayed for a quick video. Thanksfully the stones were quite "soft" and did "sprotch" on the windscreen. As you can see on Jason's pics there were some places with 3 to 5 cm deep of hail stones. I didn't stop to take any picture as I was on my way south to Leeston towards plenty of IC, CC and CG. I was running out of time (started work at 7pm ...) and I didn't had the time to do several videos in order to capture a nice CC or CG ... I've got only one frame which looks quite nice :

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[Nev]

Couple more stories...

'Hailstorm leaves its mark on Temuka' - Stuff
'Heavy cost to Canty's hail-hit crops' - The Press

P.S. Nice pics on Weatherwatch Aaron!

[melja]

Fresh snow around the hills of tekapo this morning on the web cam- looks to be about 900m, only 2degs at twizel so cold for this time of year.

[NZstorm]

Looks like there could be another round of storms/hail for eastern Canterbury on Sunday as another polar trough crosses.

[Vertigo]

great funnel/tornado pics! i knew there was one in there! was that SW of darfield, Lacertae?

[Richard]

Fresh snow around the hills of tekapo this morning on the web cam- looks to be about 900m, only 2degs at twizel so cold for this time of year.

The snow on the hills here is about 400m

[Lacertae]

great funnel/tornado pics! i knew there was one in there! was that SW of darfield, Lacertae?

NW of Darfield, just a kilometer or so south of Waddington/Sheffield.
But how did you guess with the rain radar ?

And a few more shots showing the cell from early stage until it produced the funnel clouds and after that.

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[Lacertae]

And finally on an other shot and a video the main updraft is visible as well as the quick shape changes of the clouds on the video ! Don't know if there were more funnel clouds but it looks like it.

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[David]

Nice big rain-free base on that storm plus a nice lowering too!
Thanks for the pics!

[Dale]

2:47pm textbook hailshaft.. thats one for the wall.

[Thunder]

Great stuff Ben and weetbicks! There might be a thing on one news tonight with some video me and steve took, did an interview to but they often cut them so it's anybodies guess as to whether they'll actuallly show anything.

I hope they get in contact with you Ben, your story would be more exciting! If they do I'm sure they'll cut me but atleast I know it's gone to a fellow chaser!

Fancy you being down here when a storm is on Spwill, hehe. Great!!!

Cheers
Aaron

[Kelly_Cattermole]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dCvi3OU9PI

short video/slideshow of the thunderstorms yesterday
(also posted in the photograph section)

[spwill]

Fancy you being down here when a storm is on Spwill, hehe. Great!!!

Started my chase at 4pm , nice storm and countryside Darfield to Waddington . Would be good to chase with you Canterbury guys one day.
A couple more photos,
1, The convergence line( southerly wind shift) over Dundein area on Sunday night
2, Over North Canterbury/ Kaikoura 7.45pm last night.

[Storm Struck]

I had a call from Vicki Wilkinson Baker from one news wanting to know if i would want to put my hail photo's on the news segment tonight.
So i kindly agreed and i have since emailed them through , so it should be an interesting story.

[tich]

melja wrote:
Fresh snow around the hills of tekapo this morning on the web cam- looks to be about 900m, only 2degs at twizel so cold for this time of year.

The snow on the hills here is about 400m

Do you really mean 1400m or 400m? I could see a dusting on the Alps above about 1300-1400m coming back into Chch late this afternoon.
Showers continued out on BP until late morning, but became sunny during afternoon.