NZ Weather Forum

Drove through 8-12mm hail at a guess. Fired off a fair few photo's without the trigger (arrived in Auckland on Tuesday, still waiting for them to contact me re GST as it's stuck in Customs). Yes it did fire up here but it looked more promising up SH 36 where I went, hence punching the hail. Sadly it wasn't worth the drive.

In hindsight, I should have come back via Rotovegas, sadly I thought it was going to stay down Murupara through Taupo, Taumaranui sort of direction.

Must get mobile internet dongle back.

Hopefully will have some photo's worth showing later when I go through them.

Lightning, not much visible, pretty much constant thunder but the embedded CC's weren't visible, very few CG's.

Took a trip to Tokoroa, seen and heard thunder so the trip was worth it, caught up with Tokie too.

The trough was quite impressive, well defined shelf clouds etc.

Storms start dissipating around 5.30. Hopefully if we have enough unstable periods the best will still be to come

The weak shear environments are great for outflow structure as the air that goes up comes down fairly quickly.

Great pictures Tim

Hopefully if we have enough unstable periods the best will still be to come

yes, the long term pattern on the gfs looks disturbed so yes, hopefully more cold trough coming our way.

Clip of marble hail at Rotovegas yesterday.

Also check out these amazing Rotorua hail-pics from TVNZ.

I would have chased yesterday but I am out of NZ, good to read this thread.

Yes that is a fairly long haul NZstorm, fair enough. Good to see you got some action Tim and Neil. As you guys say hopefully more to come this summer.

Cheers
Aaron

Oh man, I hadn't anticipated the RAW images being in a format I'm not familiar with. Worst of all the Canon software that came with the camera is not compatible with my lil netbook and refuses to instal.

Those with more experience with Canon's propriety RAW format, can you recommend a basic program that might do the job?

Oh and by the way, Thank's Aaron... 8 sleeps and counting

Lightning trigger finally cleared Customs today, $110.82 GST... No thanks to useless NZ Post.

Those with more experience with Canon's propriety RAW format, can you recommend a basic program that might do the job?

You probably have to download the Canon Raw Codec for your camera, free from the Canon website. Then Photoshop will automatically open your files in Raw ready to process.

tgsnoopy wrote:Oh man, I hadn't anticipated the RAW images being in a format I'm not familiar with. Worst of all the Canon software that came with the camera is not compatible with my lil netbook and refuses to instal.

Those with more experience with Canon's propriety RAW format, can you recommend a basic program that might do the job?

The Canon s/w doesn't like less than 1024x768 - on my netbook it has a utility to switch to a virtual 1024x800 resolution instead of the physical 1024x600.
The simplest converter is "dcraw" which runs on the command-line and you can get the exe here: http://www.insflug.org/raw/ But it only produces PGM or TIF. You'd then have to use something like Irfanview to crop and convert to jpeg.
Picasa from google also claims to support RAW files: http://picasa.google.com/
I've never used either of them myself as I've had Lightroom since it was launched (now available for $188 from Ascent).

Now that I know the Canon minimum display requirements, it seems the best bet is to instal that. Photoshop is probably a bit resource hungry for the poor lil netbook.

Nice photo-gallery here of the hail from the Rotorua Daily Post. Also see accompanying story here.

It would appear that the W'ern and S'ern areas of Rotorua were hardest hit, with the Whakarewarewa station to the S recording 43mm between 4:30pm and 5:30pm, and about 60mm between 4pm and 6pm, while Rotorua Aero, just 8 km to the NE, only recorded 7mm.

Tauranga Aero doesn't appear to have recorded any rainfall, but apparently a few Kiwifruit orchards to the W in the Te Puna area did suffer extensive hail-damage to crops. The hail-storm seems to have missed Te Puke to the SE though, the Bay's main Kiwifruit growing district.

kicking myself I did not drive to Rotorua from here...only 3 hours from here ....closer than Taupo

Manukau heads obs wrote:kicking myself I did not drive to Rotorua from here...only 3 hours from here ....closer than Taupo

You and me both, I got over the Rotorua side of the gorge & realised I'd punched it and the show was over.

and Tim is less than 1 hour from Rotorua too...I bet you are kicking yourself too?

jamie.haultain wrote:if i were chasing i would stay clear of the early crap. Whakatane looks like it had a one strike wonder earlyer thismorning and looks to be a lot of convective junk around that area going by the radar. Somehwere back inland closer to rotorua could be the spot maybe? Or even further back towards Taupo?
What are peoples thoughts?

Im impressed i was on target for this one! Shame i couldnt chase. Rotorua is close for us in hamilton.

yup...

and Tim is less than 1 hour from Rotorua too...I bet you are kicking yourself too?

The thought of driving to Rotorua put me off. LOL Once you get out of the Waikato the chase country is rubbish as well.

but apparently a few Kiwifruit orchards to the W in the Te Puna area did suffer extensive hail-damage to crops.

Cropping is very vulnerable to hail. Where there any reports of large hail?

NZstorm wrote: Cropping is very vulnerable to hail. Where there any reports of large hail?

Not sure about the Te Puna orchards but, although subjective, reports in that Rotorua Daily Post article did mention hail-stones "as big as golf balls" (43mm) and "about the size of ice cubes" (30-40mm).

Not sure about the Te Puna orchards but, although subjective, reports in that Rotorua Daily Post article did mention hail-stones "as big as golf balls" (43mm) and "about the size of ice cubes" (30-40mm).

NZers are not used to large hail and the golf ball reports always seem to come out after a hail storm. It would be interesting to see if there were any measured reports out there.

I didn't bother stopping. My thoughts re Golf Balls were backed up by actual photo's I took in January last year from Memory. This time I think I was reasonably accurate with 8 to 12mm diameter hail on SH 36 between Tauranga and Rotorua, about 5.40pm

Thanks for that report tgsnoopy.

Think auckland misses out on them because of the central NI landmass causing heat lows and local ridges there,can be seen on the synoptic charts too wheres theres nothing here as far as land mass.

Story in the Rotorua post about storm damage.

http://www.rotoruadailypost.co.nz/news/ ... 2/1175255/

not sure about Phillips quoted expanation there
rain freezes in clouds easily at the best of times
it was the very cold upper pool of air coinciding with a surface trough and convergence (forcing) that was the key...surely....