Cold Air Collision Low - June 5-7th

[03Stormchaser]

Neat Video here of a train driving thru the snow!

[Captain Salty]

Watching with interest. One of those will- she won't- she scenarios for us in ChCh, but without a doubt somewhere is going to cop it. Came off the St James walkway yesterday, passed two women who were just starting it and they are going to have an interesting few days!

wonder if they were the ones who were "rescued" from a hut today?

[Dean.]

Watching with interest. One of those will- she won't- she scenarios for us in ChCh, but without a doubt somewhere is going to cop it. Came off the St James walkway yesterday, passed two women who were just starting it and they are going to have an interesting few days!

wonder if they were the ones who were "rescued" from a hut today?

Yes I thought the same!

[NZstorm]

Awesome clip of the train!

[Dale]

Snow falling at sea-level over there Dale? Marlborough should still be getting low level snow according to 6pm obs. Only 3C in Blenheim with recent precipitation.
Must be about 20cm where I'm at in Merivale; stopped (bar some light snow showers) about 4-4.30pm.

Yes tich.. more sleet than anything but for a time, it was snowing to sea level. The range behind me overlooking the Spring Creek mine, never seen snow down to such low levels before, it hasn't gone anywhere in a hurry either, even the born and bred locals say yesterday was the most miserable they can recall in decades.

[Paul Mallinson]

What an amazing site seeing that engine plowing through the snow. Have never seen anything like that in NZ before. It must have had a plough or a blade fitted wouldn't it? Imagine the shear mass of that engine relative to the resistance of the snow it was clearing. The engine probably hardly noticed the snow layer in terms of effort required.

An amazing amount of snow on the Porters and Arthurs Pass road. Front end loaders are having to laborously (sp?) clear the snow. I remember in Canada seeing snow ploughs leaving a wall of snow about 10 feet high through mountain passes such as the White Pass from Whitehorse, Yukon to Skagway, Alaska. But it is understandable that we don't have that sort of equipment on hand here.

Paul

[Dale]

That video is amazing.. would have given anything to see that in person!

[Captain Salty]

i could be wrong but I don't think they use any blade device

[jamie]

Both those videos are amazing.

[Storm Struck]

Just a small clip i did yesterday of the large snow flakes falling, doesnt really do it justice on the camera but ive never seen flakes that big before like i say possibly golf ball sized flakes .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPAmYG7Q ... e=youtu.be

Down to -2.4C here now might beat last nights low.

[Razor]

Watching with interest. One of those will- she won't- she scenarios for us in ChCh, but without a doubt somewhere is going to cop it. Came off the St James walkway yesterday, passed two women who were just starting it and they are going to have an interesting few days!

wonder if they were the ones who were "rescued" from a hut today?

Yes, they were those two and I have to say in their defence, they were well equiped, prepared for snow and I was not concerned for them when they wandered by. I don't think anyone had heard that forecast of a metre of snow before they went in. Snow yes, and a decent dump, but not a metre!

[Nev]

Summary in this snippet of a few daily low max-temp records set on Wednesday...

'Novelty of day off school wears thin' - The Press (Stuff)
Last updated 07:12 08/06/2012

The cold snap is a hangover from Wednesday's heavy snow, when the maximum temperature at Christchurch Airport in the official 24-hour period from 9am that day reached a pitiful 0.4 degrees Celsius.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) said that was the city's lowest day maximum in nearly 149 years of record-keeping.

Until Wednesday, the record was the daily maximum of 1.2C measured in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens on July 22, 1918.

While readings began in the gardens in 1863, figures have only been taken at the airport since 1954, where the previous coldest day maximum was 1.7C on August 28, 1992, during that year's big snow.

Early yesterday morning the mercury dipped to -5.8C at the airport, only slowly rising above freezing after 11am and peaking around 4.9C at 1pm before falling below freezing again by 5pm.

Niwa senior climate scientist Georgina Griffiths said several other South Island spots on Wednesday had record-low maximum temperatures for June, including Lincoln, which reached only 0.7C, making it the coldest June day since records began there in 1881 and the second-coldest behind the 0.4C high on August 28, 1992.

Other June records included Greymouth, which only reached 5.2C, Blenheim Airport, up to 5.6C, and Arthur's Pass only reaching -1.2C, making it the fourth-coldest on record there in any month, although -4.1C on June 20, 1983 stands as the record.

[Nev]

I see Geoff Mackley has added a few more nice HD images of Arthurs Pass on Wed/Thu.

[Nev]

Mod Note: Have moved a couple of posts about future events currently being discussed in the 'General June Weather' thread, to that thread. Please try to stick to the relevant threads.

[Skywatcher]

Short time-lapse video from the webcam showing the snowfall and thaw.

[Manukau heads obs]

what camera is that?
it is very good in low light levels

[Andy]

Nice one.

[Orion]

Brilliant! - I love watching time-lapse films.

[Skywatcher]

what camera is that?
it is very good in low light levels

A Canon 400D DSLR and 20mm f/2.8 lens.

[Richard]

That looked neat,was that lightning to the right of the house near the start??

[trickytiger]

That looked neat,was that lightning to the right of the house near the start??

If that was just before 7am, we seen the same flash to the south of Culverden which I heard someone say it was something blowing up at a substation when i was at the chip shop the other night.

[Skywatcher]

If it's at about 6 seconds then that's just an aircraft trail from the 20-30 second exposure it uses at night. The house is just off the centre line of the main airport runway so it picks up a few of them.

[Manukau heads obs]

ah ha, 20 to 30 second exposure used for night, thats how you are picking up the stars

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Just gone through this thread of this significant snow event for Canterbury.
Good reports for this weather event whilst I was away.
Looks like a good snow dump resulting to a clash of cold and warm air.
In some ways, I feel glad that I was away and didn't experience it. Had enough of the snow disruptions last year but as it looks likely that it may be a cold winter as we slowly move out of this elogated La Nina ( I hope I got the correct season name?) period, there may be more snowy events to come.