General December Weather

[mikestormchaser]

An active thunderstorm has developed in timaru by the looks. Gust front yard on radar.

[snowstormwatcher]

Yeah thunder and lightning here with heavy rain.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Yes. If I was in Geraldine, I would go for a look

[GreggWard]

Quite a bit of thunder being heard from a storm just to the SE of Palmy, over the Tararuas.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Starting to clear away now but with lots of Cu forming.
Might get a 'clap' later on ???
...especially after missing out on last night's performance

[Richard]

Whats been interesting of late has been a number of localized extremely heavy downpours in Canterbury - late October Hawarden with 30mm in 10 mins. - Hurunui village 50+mm in 20 mins on the same day - Amberley with 70+mm (1/12/2016), - and the resent heavy showers on Wednesday night.

[Manukau heads obs]

good news north Canty has been getting good rain of late
https://www.niwa.co.nz/static/climate/smd_anom.png?1234

amazing to see Fiordland 'drying out' ?

[Richard]

Seems that some areas in North Canterbury received more rain than others, Waiau had only 1mm, Cheviot 14.2mm , Greta Valley 18mm, Hawarden 37mm and 48mm here. But what pisses me off is i slept through an amazing lightning display, just talking with a woman in Hawarden who said it was one of the best she had see for ages before the deluge arrived

[Nev]

amazing to see Fiordland 'drying out' ?

Milford Sound only had 40% of its normal rainfall back in Aug and Sep, and probably about 70% this Dec. However, the rest of the year has been well above average, with about 9.1 metres ytd, compared to 6.7 metres for a normal year.

[Richard]

Seems that some areas in North Canterbury received more rain than others, Waiau had only 1mm, Cheviot 14.2mm , Greta Valley 18mm, Hawarden 37mm and 48mm here.

I see Culverden on 15km away only got 1.8mm. A neighbour one k east of me recorded 57mm

[RWood]

amazing to see Fiordland 'drying out' ?

Milford Sound only had 40% of its normal rainfall back in Aug and Sep, and probably about 70% this Dec. However, the rest of the year has been well above average, with about 9.1 metres ytd, compared to 6.7 metres for a normal year.

Then the 1988 record of 9232mm may be under threat if there's a decent rain event in the last week ... wonder how much Cropp Waterfall has logged ...

Edit: adding up the NIWA monthly summary totals and the Met service website dailies it comes to 9134mm so far subject to verification - with rain in its forecast for several of the remaining days, the record should go.

[mikestormchaser]

Merry Christmas all. Hopefully Santa has been kind to you all! And that you eat, drink and be merry! As for the weather.. seems to be a cloudy dreary day down this way today. With temperatures not any higher then about 18C

[Richard]

Was nice and sunny but has clouded over in the last hour.

[Orion]

Merry Christmas all. Hopefully Santa has been kind to you all! And that you eat, drink and be merry! As for the weather.. seems to be a cloudy dreary day down this way today. With temperatures not any higher then about 18C

Merry Christmas, all.

Cloudy and around 14.9deg. here at the moment.

Have a happy day

[Richard]

Dan ya got it wrong, its raining lightly here, but hey, i dont care

[Nev]

Milford Sound only had 40% of its normal rainfall back in Aug and Sep, and probably about 70% this Dec. However, the rest of the year has been well above average, with about 9.1 metres ytd, compared to 6.7 metres for a normal year.

Then the 1988 record of 9232mm may be under threat if there's a decent rain event in the last week ... wonder how much Cropp Waterfall has logged ...

Edit: adding up the NIWA monthly summary totals and the Met service website dailies it comes to 9134mm so far subject to verification - with rain in its forecast for several of the remaining days, the record should go.

I've based those figures on NIWA's long-term Milford Sound site, which shows 9,094mm ytd, or currently 138mm short of its own 1988 record. The nearby AWS and EWS also both have incomplete data for 2016.

According to the West Coast Regional Council, Cropp River at Waterfall's 2016 ytd rainfall is currently 11,752mm (calendar-year record is 16,617mm in 1998).

[matttbs]

Wow it is weird to see Ashburton forecast with only 13C high dropping down to 7C in a couple of days according to metservice. What a crappy spring/summer it's been so far

[Dean.]

Wow it is weird to see Ashburton forecast with only 13C high dropping down to 7C in a couple of days according to metservice. What a crappy spring/summer it's been so far

Very changeable,cloudy.Sunshine hours must be down!

[spwill]

The Southern Annular Mode is running negative, the westerly pattern that normally sits south of NZ gets pushed north. Expect generally below average temperatures across NZ next two or three weeks, not to say there wont be some warm sunny days in the mix.

For Auckland the next few days look cloudy, possible light shower tomorrow, showers Thursday, fine weather for Friday/Saturday. Edit, looks like cloud will burn off quite a bit today.

[Richard]

I cant remember the last time we had a stationery anticyclone parked up over NZ.

[treetop]

Still experiencing October weather in Tauranga. Cloudy/windy 22 deg days .Sea temps along the beach barely 16 deg lately.Can see this pattern continuing for a few weeks yet. Hopefully some warm wet weather from Feb though with the current Ocean conditions, unlikely to have much moisture coming from the North either. The high temps in Australia often have the reverse here as the air flows move around the Highs.What does thunder sound like ???? Been some months now.

[Manukau heads obs]

sea temperatures on the west coast are like 19c

[spwill]

The current pattern looks more like an October pattern with the highs sitting west of NZ, NZ on the cool side of the circulation. There has been little in the way of humid weather so far for Auckland.
Some areas in the North getting very dry, Kerikeri only 10mm so far for December.

[Manukau heads obs]

this is the el nino summer we were supposed to have had last summer, lol

[jamie]

this is the el nino summer we were supposed to have had last summer, lol

Yea that's so true