NZ Weather Forum

7cm in Ashburton,still snowing in showers,more developing from the SE on radar

Still going strong here, hasn't let up at all. We shall see what day break brings

front has completely collapsed for us in town. What little settled is just about thawed away, and precipitation gone now

Very light dusting on lawn here in Rangiora but now rain.

A snow/rain mix here and nothing settled,strange how it goes sometimes being at 240m asl yet it settled at lower levels.

Looked out at 2am and there was maybe a cm on the grass and light snow falling. A few moderate showers of mostly rain (over 7mm) since then have melted most of it. Going by my webcam, the snow was "deepest" at about 0030 which was also when the overnight low of 0.9C occurred.

Just had a very heavy shower here, dumped 3cm In about 20 minutes.Not a breath of wind so they chill temp on the Young stock isn't too bad

Another heavy shower. Get the feeling things are starting to click into gear here after nothing last night. Plenty of activity on the radar

Hey all bit of advice please do u think it will stay relatively dry now for chch till this evening? Have childs bday party at 130 and trying to decide to go pickup bouncy castle or not thanks in advance

50+cm of snow up on Ruapehu since Thursday night with a heavy coating down to the Desert Rd..

Still snowing heavily in Central NI. This webcam is about 750masl..

50+cm of snow up on Ruapehu since Thursday night

needed as 1m was washed away by that latest warm rain episode

Reports also coming in of 45cm of new snow at Mt Hutt

A few snow showers here in Arrowtown this morning.
Drove from Chch to Arrowtown yesterday, wintry showers and snow from Tekapo.

sleety showers here this morning, most snow melted by 3am

Just had an extremely heavy snow showers which gave us 4 more cm's in roughly 25 minutes. We now have 8cm here since 6 this morning

Becoming fine here now,activity will be mostly offshore now for us.Still around 5cm on ground,should be a quick thaw with no overnight frost.

mikestormchaser wrote:my thinking of the snow tonight bradley is yes the depth of the clouds but also a convergence factor that we have been talking about, sometimes there has to be that factor and its playing its part tonight.
I had a real feeling something would happen tonight but thought i would stay on the hush for a change due to having a such dismal outcomes, waiting/wishing/wondering all winter.
But yes tonight for me stuck out like dogs balls but sometimes i just like to say nothing

Thanks Mike, shows how hard it is to predict weather when there's a dozen or so factors that contribute to a snow event - guess that's one of the reasons that we find weather so interesting!

We have a new stupid term from Stuff, 'Snow bombs'

Wow, have you all seen......? A snow bomb has hit the South Island according to stuff.co.nz. NZ reporting at its finest.

The Stuff headline is misleading (surprise!) but the "snow bomb" term was used by a NZTA spokeswoman referring to a buildup of snow in trees that can bring down trees/branches onto roads when they fall. So it's not yet a new description of a weather event...

Its not yet a new description but soon will be!

Stuff may have changed the headline…

'South Island roads open after heavy snow' - Stuff
Last updated 11:56, August 8 2015

Lewis Pass had 40cm snow overnight, resulting in heavy "snow bombs" in trees, a NZTA spokeswoman said.

I think the Mt Hutt Facebook page used the term last June, which it appears was then incorrectly attributed to MetService's Facebook page in this TV3 story.

Edit: Also another Stuff headline from earlier in June… 'Snow bomb hits the south'

The media began to create thier own weather text swear words that of which weather enthusiasts frowned apon, and even teenagers couldnt understand.

Any snow which fell last night was quickly melted away from the heavy graupel showers that followed overnight, after my last post last night it did snow again for abit but soon turned back to sleet.
The convection cloud depth did the job last night, and after 1am lifted the snow level to around 200m.

There is a coastal flick from a trough tonight which could see a few showers through the city, sleet and hail mainly but Sunday afternoon and overnight into monday should see widespread showers snow around 100-200m possibly near sea level early Monday morning.

Will be interesting to see if we get any snow in Rakaia Sunday night/early Monday with the next front then. How are the models looking for precipitation? We had a few cms of snow here last evening with the shower activity that came through. Great to see Mt Hutt get another good top up.