Dec 30th/31st, Jan 1st storms, New Zealand!

Chris Raine · Unread post by **Chris Raine** » Thu 30/12/2004 08:28

Drizzling here in Invercargill this morning with a 8 kt SE. Temp 11 degrees. Planning to get north of the murk and chase thunderstorms in Otago later today .

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Thu 30/12/2004 08:47

Should be imteresting what we get, Aaron and I are off stormchasing today and I would think StevenG would be off chasing today!

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:02

I see Met Service mention the risk of severe Thunderstorms for the Eastern Hills of Otago today. A sunny afternoon down there would have some good Cb viewing.

GreggWard · Unread post by **GreggWard** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:02

Metservice is picking eastern Otago and northern Southland for the most severe thunderstorms today:

http://metservice.com/default/index.php ... key=212868

Gary Roberts · Unread post by **Gary Roberts** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:12

GreggWard wrote:Metservice is picking eastern Otago and northern Southland for the most severe thunderstorms today:

http://metservice.com/default/index.php ... key=212868

Sunny here in the Mackenzie right now.

Fujita Phil · Unread post by **Fujita Phil** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:13

Same here... off this afternoon to have a look

. Going to take the laptop this time as I don't always have enough space on my memorysticks and I can just dump the photos and check them later. Last time and had to keep popping home to get more space

Here's to a great day

Gary Roberts · Unread post by **Gary Roberts** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:14

NZstorm wrote:I thought Canterbury was looking particularly green...

It's weird...green just doesn't look right! The landscape down here is always supposed to be brown!

Fujita Phil · Unread post by **Fujita Phil** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:25

Chris Raine wrote:Planning to get north of the murk and chase thunderstorms in Otago later today .

Gary Roberts wrote:Sunny here in the Mackenzie right now.

Drizzley and murky here too, with only about 100m visibility up in the hill suburbs. Light breeze from the SW at present but has that feel that it will lift soon?

Storm Struck · Unread post by **Storm Struck** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:26

Yeah with my photo's I took last night I thought they were Mamatus by thw way they looked and how you often see them after or before a TS.
But yeah they are Altocumuls when I think of that yeah good spotting guys I just looked in my weather book which that book happend to be from America and all my other weather are NZ.
Yeah 20.6dg here now

with a light NE wind scatterd cloud broken up to the west of me no CB's or CU as to speak of just yet but it's still early days yet I do expect TS to start popping up from about midday onwards.
I have all my stuff ready for TS got all batteries charged up and ready to take on an afternoon/evening of TS.
Happy Storm chasing down south and In Canty maybe even up north around Auckland/Northland area.
Cheers
JASON TIPPET.

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:36

I can't recall seeing mammatus with Cb in NZ, has anyone else seen it.

I have seen plenty of good examples of Mammatus with high cloud in the East of the South Island though.

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:46

There was some nice cb mammatus over Auckland early this year.

Photo here

http://www.thunderstorm.co.nz/newpage5.htm

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Thu 30/12/2004 10:51

Who know's where the road will take us today, the skies the limit.....things look ok to be available to stormchase over the next 3 days none stop. That's if they happen like that, looking forward to a possible night time show to.

Awsome to see the severe forecast for storms, looking foward to it!! We might get to the edge of it or a bit further in if where daring enough, otherwise I'm sure the rest of Canterbury will be great!

Have a good one and look foward to some great stories.

Chris Raine · Unread post by **Chris Raine** » Thu 30/12/2004 12:56

Heading off now. I see they are forcasting severe thunderstorms in Northern Southland today as well . Will report in later . Still drizzling lightly in Invercargill SE blowing 10-12 kts

Willoughby · Unread post by **Willoughby** » Thu 30/12/2004 13:39

Periods of heavy rain in Hamilton currently, 20c with a fresh northeast breeze

River levels in the Waikato aren't far off from flooding warning criteria and getting closer a certainty for Bay of Plenty-Rotorua rivers....

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Thu 30/12/2004 13:42

Today's Invercargill midday sounding does not look particularly unstable to me. The 500hpa temp is not very cold, -16C. I would like to see -20C, preferably -25 for storm development over Otago and Southland.

Just saw you message Foggy. It's still chucking it down in Auckland as well.

Chris Raine · Unread post by **Chris Raine** » Thu 30/12/2004 16:22

Well I 'm back after driving up to Lumsden and half way to Gore. Torrential rain from what appears to be a convergence zone around Dipton down to Winton . No thundery activity although a few distant spherics on the radio . Dense overcast so any activity would have to embedded. Rain band appeasr to be tracking slowly SE.

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Thu 30/12/2004 16:29

There's a nice cell over North Otago on Met service 4pm radar.

Fujita Phil · Unread post by **Fujita Phil** » Thu 30/12/2004 20:14

So... we drove to inland Otago about 3.30pm. Headed through Outram, inland to Middlemarch and a bit further around that area. The skies stayed claggy all the way with intermittent drizzle.

Sperics on the radio from about 4pm to 4.45pm and then never heard another one. But as Chris said the sky was so densely overcast that any activity would be hard to spot.

Got home about 7.30pm with nothing more than a 200km round trip, a nice coffee in Middlemarch and these two stupid photos... 'one tree hill' (you can see how overcast it was) and 'where's the bacon & bread?'...

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Thu 30/12/2004 20:29

I had nothing really in store for today (and I smoked lots as well

) and it is really sad to see that you 2 Southern guys had a non eventful day except maybe for the silly road sign photographs!
A slightly better day could be in store tomorrow as long as the cloud clears to allow for ground heating.
Skies are clearing a bit now here with lots of thunder potential indicators up there in the sky. If that had of been earlier and depending on what was happening earlier on in the atmosphere, things could of been different.
Nevermind.
1 is about the best I can drag up for tomorrow

JohnGaul
NZTS

Skywatcher · Unread post by **Skywatcher** » Thu 30/12/2004 20:54

Headed west at about 4:30pm to Rakaia Gorge with some "interesting" unstable skies near and in the mountains but the bases were fairly high. By the time I reached the south side of the river the sky was overcast with light rain, cloud was almost to ground level. Drove down to Mt Somers then across to Rakaia and back home just before 8pm.

It started clearing north of Dunsandel and was sunny in Templeton ! Another 180km with only a few cloud photos to show for it - no interesting road signs

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Fri 31/12/2004 06:38

1 is about the best I can drag up for tomorrow

Looks like another fizzer day. This low over NZ lacks the cold upper air
and over Otago/Southland were the upper air is coldest (500mb -18C) the weather is cloudy and cool.

My thunderstorm forecast for NZ today is a slight chance of an afternoon cb over inland Canterbury. I don't expect any noteworthy convection over the North Island today.

Air should be more unstable over NZ tomorrow.

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Fri 31/12/2004 07:24

A beautiful morning here, can't see any clouds from my place.

NZstorm, there was a lot unstable air around the Low two days back, lots of TS in the Tasman Sea however the Satellite pics now show that TS activity has died away.

Chris Raine · Unread post by **Chris Raine** » Fri 31/12/2004 08:57

It's been raining hard down here since 5pm yesterday. I got 55 mm in the rain gauge this morning. Still raining and the rivers are rising quite steadily

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Fri 31/12/2004 09:49

Doesnt look to bad for today

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Fri 31/12/2004 10:48

TODAY: 78.9 kmh (240Â°) @ 01:05

Abit of a gust caught at Templeton compared to what Jeffs max gust was:
21 kmh at 03:30