NZ Weather Forum

I liked this Q & A on a Chicago weather forum. Not sure if Met or others in NZ use these terms a lot nowadays.

Dear Tom,
What is the difference between isolated thunderstorms and scattered thunderstorms?
--Richard Heytow, Highland Park

Dear Richard,
In meteorological jargon, scattered and isolated describe the percent of the forecast area experiencing thunderstorm rainfall at any given moment. Scattered thunderstorms occur across the landscape displaying no organization (such as lines or clusters) and randomly cover 10 to 50 percent of the forecast area. Isolated thunderstorms are "loners," well removed from any others and affecting less than 10 percent of the forecast area. The terms scattered and isolated refer only to areal coverage and do not address other storm issues, such as severity or intensity of rain.

I don't use those terms as we don't get many thunderstorms here, especially in a La Nina period.
...but in a thunderstorm season there might be a thunderstorm over there, isolated away from somewhere like "Thunderstorm Corner",where various thunderstorms may pop up, say, forming along the coast in a related weather event. I use the term "associated" for that.

JohnGaul
NZThS

I think the terms could be usefully applied to rain showers.

RWood wrote:I think the terms could be usefully applied to rain showers.

Yes, Rupert, more associated to rain showers than thunderstorms.

JohnGaul
NZThS

To the average person who have little understanding of weather, scattered or isolated means very little anyway.
Its interesting how the terminology is different in different country's though,in Australia to say the weather will get milder means its going to cool down from been bloody hot,but here it means its going to warm up.

Richard wrote:To the average person who have little understanding of weather, scattered or isolated means very little anyway.

An analogy might be - to scatter seeds randomly over the ground as opposed to planting the odd isolated seed.

Richard wrote:Its interesting how the terminology is different in different country's though,in Australia to say the weather will get milder means its going to cool down from been bloody hot,but here it means its going to warm up.

Don't think the BoM or MetService would agree. The term 'mild' is generally used to describe relatively calm, fine days (or nights) where temps are about average for a paticular location for the time of year.
(See BoM Weather Words > Temperature)

I often think of occassional rain develops in areas of wind shelter ie lee of the ranges when becoming unstable wheres scattered rain develops in windward areas and isolated means basically none apart from a rare chance.

Nev - you often see it in the BOM forecasts for Perth during the summertime when they get the easterly winds"Hot easterly winds changing to a milder afternoon sea breeze"

Yes mild generally means cooler weather in summer and warmer weather in winter. BOM use the term mild quite a lot in summer for cooler weather.