General April Weather

[Orion]

Hearing thunder in Ashburton now.

[darcyplumb]

^beautiful lightning to the south as well

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

It was rumbling away nicely as it headed north now possibly over the Ashburton area.
As it was claggy no lightning was seen although a few times the cloud lit up with what people call sheet lightning.

[Razor]

Pretty active tracker now through mid Canterbury

[darcyplumb]

Pretty active tracker now through mid Canterbury

It was awesome to watch. The sky lit up purple at least 10 times within 15 minutes. Great night time viewing.

[Razor]

Very close lightning and heavy rain in Halswell now. This has certainly escalated!

[Classicford]

Caught the lightning flash on our security camera 730pm in hornby. As I'm typing this, another good flash and rumble.

[dogmelon]

Well well well, old dogmelon was right. Oh hell that was close and loud.

[JP.]

Quite an impressive thunder and lightning show over ChCh city.

[Razor]

I've unplugged everything in the house. I dont normally do that. Close and frequently cloud to ground lightning. Some insanely close and very vivid well defined flashes

[einzack]

Impressive over Rolleston as well.
Saw the first lightning over the Port Hills when walking the dog in the country south of Rolly around 6pm, but didn't anticipate we would get a show this good.
Our lights flickered once, which is the first time we've experienced that since moving here 3 years ago and I was surprised since all the wires are underground near us.

[Chris Raine]

Was forecasted by Metservice today

[Razor]

One was right on us alright, that was instant thunder

[Classicford]

Caught this one on my phone. Hornby, 8pm.

[darcyplumb]

Thunder, lightning and rain again in Ashburton.

[Razor]

I'm reasonably certain this pic on social media accurately captures the strike over our house. Anyone up the Port Hills will have been rattled!

[mikestormchaser]

That was a wee bit of a surprise, I did look at the models last night and some things looked abit suspicious however the weather patterns have been so boring, I haven't been looking as well as I should be as of late.
I was able to capture this time though! Been a long time coming since iv managed this!
Enjoy

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Clouding over overnight with it coming onto rain from early morning with a change to southerly winds. Rain easing late morning but remaining claggy and overcast for the rest of the day. Wind dropping away and becoming light and variant. Around 5:30pm a rumble of thunder was heard around the Mt. Peel area which gave me a lot of question marks. ????????
What? Obviously something was happening above the clagg and this resulted in thunderstormic activity developing and moving northeast in the unstable SW flow that delivered 275 strikes in 2 hours over the mid Canterbury/Christchurch area.
Clagg gradually clearing in behind this activity and becoming fine this evening. 16.2C the maximum for today with 3.3mm of rain.

[Razor]

Just reflecting on last nights awesome show. It was a strange day, southerly came through in the morning and seemed to die away with much less gusto than had been forecast. Late afternoon MS added a TS Risk for Canterbury, but by then things were pretty much already happening and as it moved up through fro m Mid Canterbury it really organised itself over southern ChCh

Even at 6Pm looking at the skies there was nothing apparent, but an hour or 2 later it was all on. there was still no wind until that arrived around midnight.

Seems quite an unusual chain of events.

[darcyplumb]

Just reflecting on last nights awesome show. It was a strange day, southerly came through in the morning and seemed to die away with much less gusto than had been forecast. Late afternoon MS added a TS Risk for Canterbury, but by then things were pretty much already happening and as it moved up through fro m Mid Canterbury it really organised itself over southern ChCh

Even at 6Pm looking at the skies there was nothing apparent, but an hour or 2 later it was all on. there was still no wind until that arrived around midnight.

Seems quite an unusual chain of events.

The southerly change was not what I expected to happen yesterday morning. It hardly changed the temperature here and it was very muggy afterwards. Usually you get the winds that are gusty and that sudden temperature drop but none of that occurred yesterday. It was lovely to see some lightning last night - I dare say the best of the season so far!

[Richard]

You fellas are so lucky getting the lightning last night. Its got to be over three years since there's been over head lightning here

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

You fellas are so lucky getting the lightning last night. Its got to be over three years since there's been over head lightning here

One thing good about it, it cleared away the clagg
...but then if and when the clagg will return, will it bring more thunderstorms ?????

[spwill]

I noticed GFS yesterday morning was popping up late showers over Canterbury with the evening cold trough. There was reasonable low level moisture there as well relative to the cold upper air.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Last evening's thunderstorm did clear the clagg away and today was a fine, sunny day. Quite bright, not used to bright sunlight.
Any way a cool wind which restricted the maximum temperature to 15.7C.
Temperature dropping away this evening. Could be a slight air frost in the morning in some exposed areas.

[Awhituobs]

10c this morning here (clear skies and offshore winds)
big change for us!
(woa, I see Jamie is only 3.8c)