A little bit hypocritical I would think!

[Manukau heads obs]

this article:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10697219
and this statement:

Despite droughts, floods, tornadoes and snow, weather analyst Philip Duncan said it was not considered a year of extremes. "It's easy for the media to use the word 'extreme' but really the stormy weather events this year were fairly isolated and few and far between," he said.

I am sorry Phillip but I really am a bit surprised because your news items yourself do use alot of alarmist words....

but otherwise, keep up the good work!

[tich]

There's plenty of 'extreme' weather in NZ every year. Such is the variable nature of NZ's climate.

[Dale]

I have to agree with Brian.
This is not a dig at you or weatherwatch so please do not take this post the wrong way, if the moderators have an issue, then trash it & kindly leave me a pvt msg as to why.

You guys are independant forecasters and a service that a lot of kiwis look forward to ever morning, including myself. Purely for the fact it has a personal touch to the FC's and anything breaking.. but from a personal standpoint I have to disagree with the few & far between weather events.

Number 1.. christmas was cancelled at nan & pops place because of the destruction hat occoured during the big storm. Their house is yet to be rebuilt, but we had our family gathering somewhere else. Same storm, we suffered structural damage.
The snow dump in Southland.. crashing down of the stadium. Same thing happened last week in the states!
Drought.. flooding rains.. isolated storms, massive hail dumps over the kaimais.. bushfires the last week down the Sth.. landspouts and tornados through taranaki.. NZ is a very dynamic place when it comes to weather, as I was explaining to a friend in Aussie on the phone earlier..

Happy New and hopefully not as destructive year from all the whanau here

[Nev]

Quote from NIWA's spokesperson this morn...

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) climate scientist Georgina Griffiths said nationally the year had been rather ''benign'' climate wise.

''Mean annual temperatures were slightly up in most regions of the country and greatly up in others.''

The year had a ''warm flavour'' overall and sunshine was up in most regions as well, she said.

- Otago Daily Times

[Manukau heads obs]

humm, benign for temperature variation maybe
but then that statement is false when she says sunshine was up in most regions...thats not benign (althouugh it is a boring weather parameter I guess)

maybe these days we just get more and more used to wild weather it takes more to get us excited?

[TonyT]

Where do these people live? Under a rock?

[Michael]

I remember 20 years ago we were told it was extreme weather "this year"

[RWood]

humm, benign for temperature variation maybe
but then that statement is false when she says sunshine was up in most regions...thats not benign (althouugh it is a boring weather parameter I guess)

maybe these days we just get more and more used to wild weather it takes more to get us excited?

Sunshine is NOT "a boring weather parameter" as far as I'm concerned - we don't get enough of it! Wellington was unfortunate in being part of a small area that had less than its longterm average. However, this has been rare in the last decade or two (average has risen significantly). Not all of us yearn for thunderstorms.

What is boring and irritating is the PR types claiming their town as sunniest - and this time it will go to Whakatane, despite it being highly debatable (different measurement method which has consistently inflated readings at sites that have switched to it, when compared with manual values).

[Manukau heads obs]

I thought that might touch a nerve with your RW,

I guess there cerainly was long periods of settled weather patterns for the year, i.e the droughts at the start and end of the year...

[RWood]

I think NIWA got sick of saying "....was a year of extremes" - because every year is in a sense, so what constitutes an extreme year? I imagine some sort of count of events, with bigger weightings for the bigger ones, could be compiled as some sort of rough guide. I don't personally care about the issue so much as I live on a property that will not get washed away - though a fair amount of water drains across the sloping footpaths in wet spells, and our notorious wind cannot harm it much either. Consequently I only judge the year for my locality by the "macro" figures - mean temp (higher the better), rainfall and rain days (lower the better, in this climate), sunshine (higher the better). In that sense I don't think there was anything wrong with the NIWA person's comment.

[cantygal]

I think the media have tended to beat up some stories over the last 10 years and many reports/stories are a bit OTT!
Weatherwatch do have their moments but as a small brother to the likes of NIWA and MetService, they do a more than adequate job.
Their intentions are good but sometimes the execution can be a little distorted however I visit the site regularly and it's a very good source in the main for weather news.
Perhaps it's surprising that some folk on here haven't yet formed a site of their own or could they be judged a bit harshly as well

[Storm Struck]

Something i will bring up and may have been brought up before, is ive noticed the weather watch site is very concentrated on the north island and not so much the south island.
Philip you do a great job and its a good site, but there needs to be variation New Zealand has 3 main islands north south and stewart island.
I may have slipped a comment in the other week because all you talked about was the north island when the south island had bad weather too.
Keep up the good work and take note to continue improving your website.

[Nev]

New Zealand has 3 main islands north south and stewart island.

Re the latter, it depends on how you define 'main', i.e. Great Barrier Island has over twice the population of Stewart Island, while here on Waiheke Island it's about 20 times (although currently it's more like 100 times). LOL

[Manukau heads obs]

although currently it's more like 100 times

thats what this area is like today....lots of people at the beaches and lots of cars on the road!

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

What about Resolution Island in Fjordland? That's a largely populated island, not of the human species of course, but that's not important

JohnGaul
NZThS

[spwill]

What about Resolution Island in Fjordland? That's a largely populated island, not of the human species of course, but that's not important

JohnGaul
NZThS

Yes, but south of the Bombay Hills as well.

[Michael]

When you drew N.Z as a map at school you never(perhaps if you lived in auckland at that period) put gulf islands in or kapiti island even but some reason put stewart island in,otherwise the 2 major islands didnt look quite complete,its a bit like the anology of 4 main centres in the country wheres Hamilton has more population than Dunedin and Tauranga too has more than Dunedin?

[Manukau heads obs]

did I even spell hypocritical correct?
LOL

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

its a bit like the anology of 4 main centres in the country wheres Hamilton has more population than Dunedin and Tauranga too has more than Dunedin?

The traditonal 4 main centres were the 4 main geographical main centres rather than the main centres with regards to population size. Now they refer to the 6 main centres to take in geographical and population location size as well.


JohnGaul
NZThS

[Manukau heads obs]

I think a few people have been having a go at the poor old SI....LOL

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

did I even spell hypocritical correct?
LOL

Yes, you did, Brian

JohnGaul
NZThS

[Myself]

I have tried to lay off weatherwatch to see how they go. But I find them endlessly frustrating.
As a weather news aggregator, it could be very good. But even in this I think it fails too often. Because they see themselves as something of a rival to MetService, they are unable to fulfill their brief of being a "Weather News Authority". It is annoying when they pull an article from another website, and credit it all fully and properly, but delete parts of it that contain references to MetService, or a quote from MetService.

A recent example:

http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/s ... coromandel

vs

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10697765

Why remove the last few lines?

And another example:

http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/s ... d-bothered

vs

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10614749

They've tried to remove the comments made by a MetService forecaster early in the article, but have done such an amateur job of it they left in a stray comment towards the end which looks utterly bizarre.

In other news the long range forecast here: http://www.country99tv.co.nz/weather/long-range

They can't even correctly turn GMT into New Zealand time. They are showing a chart for 1PM Tuesday (00Z Tuesday) and have the heading of "Wednesday", and this continues throughout, for the next 10 days with the wrong headings everytime. If you can't even convert from GMT to NZ time then you're pretty much screwed in the weather business since everything is conducted in zulu time.

I think if they can improve their journalistic integrity then the site can be very good for reading weather news stories and I would certainly be a frequent visitor.

I think the forecasting is another matter, and don't think they should be doing it. The world of weather knows no bounds for these guys, and they throw around statements pretty carelessly regardless of the obvious fact that they have no authority at all. But the media and general public don't know this, and just lap it up.
And in recent months they've gone into the tropical business, which makes me feel like either laughing or crying, I have not yet decided. I know experienced meteorologists who spent their careers working in the mid or high latitudes and keep their mouths shut when it comes to the tropics, leaving it up to the experts. Now the weatherwatch "forecasters", who are actually nothing more than "reporters with an interest in the weather" think they can go out there and give credible tropical updates, even assigning confidence values to the development of tropical systems. In some cases second guessing Nadi RSMC - people that have been doing this for years and actually understand the mechanisms of cyclones and tropical weather.
This is very hairy and very difficult. But they don't care. They just do it anyway. And that is what pains me, not just ignorance but being ignorant of your own ignorance.

As for the title of "analyst", well it is meaningless. Since they don't even do their own analysis charts. This is a key skill, it takes a lot of time in some cases and yet they just piggy bag on what the MetService draw and ogle a few NWP charts. One of the most laughable statements I read was that an occluded front is like "two fronts in one". That is a clueless statement and shows a lack of understanding.
Furthermore, what about Dvorak analysis? Surely an "analyst" should be doing this if they hope to have an idea about the tropics. So where is the evidence of it happening? Unless you do this, keep your opinions to yourself about tropical cyclones, please.

Maybe I have gone on for too long, but I think weatherwatch should report the news (and they can do a good job of it) and leave their opinions and "analysis" out of it because it's really worth nothing to anyone.

[03Stormchaser]

As much as I disagree with what you have posted recently, I do agree with you here. Weather Watch do have a place, but not in competition with Metservice, keep to reporting the news stop trying to make it.

[Manukau heads obs]

overall I think they are doing a good job though
and have improved over the last year alot

must be alot of behind the scenes work to keep it all updated

this is a tough crowd here Phillip, and so take what you can and keep up the good work!

[03Stormchaser]

overall I think they are doing a good job though
and have improved over the last year alot

must be alot of behind the scenes work to keep it all updated

this is a tough crowd here Phillip, and so take what you can and keep up the good work!

Its been a tough crowd tonight on here lol

Overall Phil does a great job, updating the site with news from around NZ and the world, looks like he has been working overtime providing links the the Queensland floods. For some people its a great site, just for me it still needs to come a wee way before I will become a regular.