General August Weather

[matttbs]

First week of August looks to be dominated by the westerlies with a brief southerly flick for the south around the 3rd. Nothing exciting for the first week of the month.

[Razor]

First week of August looks to be dominated by the westerlies with a brief southerly flick for the south around the 3rd. Nothing exciting for the first week of the month.

GFS certainly begs to differ with that statement this morning- Monday looks interesting followed by a complex trough mid week. Warm advection potential anyone?

[Chris W]

GFS does seem to be returning the polar vortex to us more quickly than it was a few days ago with one or two chilly fronts next week, but for colder/more energetic weather and snow potential I'd still be looking beyond the first week. EC seems to potentially agree at least up to T+240, looking at 500mb at least.

Looks a mobile westerly to later southwesterly pattern, not seeing slow-moving or blocking highs necessarily. Not sure how the other factors such as IOD/La Nina/MJO are playing into it.

[David]

wow - sudden brief downpour here... wasn't expecting any rain at all

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Cloudy and overcast day here with calm conditions. Rain from afternoon with 3.2mm falling. 10.3C for today.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Looks a mobile westerly to later southwesterly pattern, not seeing slow-moving or blocking highs necessarily. Not sure how the other factors such as IOD/La Nina/MJO are playing into it.

Still showing a westerly pattern, so far, for this month. No anticyclones in the Aussie Bight to bring up cold southerly from the Antarctic.
Interesting to see how many frosts we will get this month here in Raukapuka as compared to July?

[Awhituobs]

tomorrow looks nasty for very gusty SW gales across the upper north island
its the start of a stormy week (which is very typical for the first week of August)

[spwill]

Cold upper levels Thursday and Friday, thundery here later in week.

[Chris Raine]

Cold this morning. Looks like snow on the way 3C at 0900.Western horizon looking threatening.

[David]

A few heavy showers around this afternoon, my station picked up 4mm in a few minutes a bit earlier

[mikestormchaser]

Small convergence and a moderate shower over rolleston just now.
Not really surprised had of had a look at the models earlier. And a S- NE influence. DP quite high at the surface looking at the 9pm chch sounding to

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

I see that the NE has been quite keen over Christchurch over the last coupla days whereas it has been overcast with clagg here and hardly any wind.
Interesting convergence line on the radar from 10:30pm.
Grey dome skies here today with a maximum of 9.8C. and coming onto light rain this evening with a bit of a southerly breeze.

[Awhituobs]

damaging severe gales have caused widespread power cuts in my area
139kmh max I recorded

[Razor]

20mm here so far, reports of surface ponding on a few commutes

[Nev]

Certainly blowing out here this morning. Here's a few gusts observed earlier before the power went off here after 5am:

Gusts km/h
117 .. Bean Rock
115 .. Tiritiri Lighthouse
111 .. Auckland Harbour Bridge
109 .. Whangaparaoa Peninsula
109 .. Passage Rock
107 .. Auckland Aero
100 .. Whenuapai Aero

[Chris W]

Blowing hard with surface water on SH1 coming north out of Chch today, but the northern motorway drained very well. Fairly wild out there.

[Awhituobs]

for some reason the windspeed has not been updating at the Manukau heads signal station

[Awhituobs]

I see the shipping containers are blown over again at Wiri
you would think they might have learnt a lesson?
(pictures show they were stacked 8 high)
Wiri is very exposed to winds off the Harbour

[Razor]

Are MS on the hard stuff this morning? ChCh for Sunday...

[Chris Raine]

Thickness levels indicate snow on Sunday in Southland from GFS

[matttbs]

Was certainly blowing a gale here in the early hours this morning. Anyone know what the wind speeds were this morning for Bombay? Was strong enough to take out our fence

[TonyT]

Are MS on the hard stuff this morning? ChCh for Sunday...

Looking at the 12Z ECMWF ensemble, 12 of the 50 runs (24%) show snow for Christchurch at some point between Sunday and Tuesday. Very coastal, more a Banks Peninsula thing I suspect.

[Cyclone Tracy]

An entertaining run by Access G this morning. Duel upper tropospheric vortex's in the mid latitudes from the mothership over the Antarctic continent on Sunday. These types of upper cut off lows in August puts snow on the ground where it normally doesn't fall.

[Razor]

Gee the latest GFS update has jumped well and truly on board with both Tony's and CT's comments. Be interesting to watch the model runs in the coming days

[matttbs]

Gee the latest GFS update has jumped well and truly on board with both Tony's and CT's comments. Be interesting to watch the model runs in the coming days

Noticed the change on the last few runs since yesterday, each run putting more and more moisture and colder air. Fingers crossed because I’m due to do a week at Cardrona from this Saturday