TS possable This weekend ( 8-9th January)

Willoughby · Unread post by **Willoughby** » Fri 07/01/2005 23:22

This rain, rain, rain is driving me INSANE!!

Last 3 days have gone...

Friday: Persistant rain or drizzle
Thursday:Persistant rain or drizzle
Wednesday:Spotty rain

And its humid so it makes you sweat and smell

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Fri 07/01/2005 23:27

No thunder here today despite what was forecasted this morning.
Actually it was quite the opposite.
After the cloud cleared it was lovely and fine, totally blue-dome for a while.
Then the ENE came up later in the afternoon.
A few Cu congestus forms did pop up to the west in the afternoon possibly due to ground heating on the plains but these lacked substance and had no bases to them.
The real highlight of the day however was the copious amounts of castellatus forms which would made for good photography.
This was ruined by the low stratus moving in off Pegasus Bay later in the afternoon. The stratus did look good however it was draped over the Port Hills.
I ventured out to Prebbleton this afternoon and looking to the south could not see much in the way of thunderstorm activity. I know that Dunedin and north Otago had some electrical activity this afternoon.
The radio is giving off a few sferics now as I type.
Steven Graham's lightning tracker has lightning going off just to the south of here but It sounds a bit further away than that.
Should be interesting to see how boring tomorrow and Sunday will be???
Possibly similar to today but low cloud moving in from the south.

JohnGaul
NZTS

Storm Struck · Unread post by **Storm Struck** » Fri 07/01/2005 23:47

Yeah bit of a dissapointment today

but unfortunatly thats summer for you here in Canterbury you get that cloud coming in off the sea with inland heat so yeah.
But I did check before and the lower cloud is breaking in the sky funny low cloud is the only cloud you can see at night.
Yeah a good Thunderstorm to the south not quite sure to where it's tracking it's sorta back and forth at the moment near elesmere very amazing storm too with heaps of strikes popping up in that area.
Iam going to have to find out and see which way it's going to track or else I will will just go to bed.
Iam off to Wanaka for a week until the 19th tomorrow so wish me luck for good weather although I do like the rain on the tent.

Cheers have a good week everyone and who knows what this storm to the south is going to do tonite my guess is it will move out to sea and disipate but shes certainly a beast out there lots of strikes.
JASON TIPPET.

Gary Roberts · Unread post by **Gary Roberts** » Sat 08/01/2005 00:12

Jasestrm wrote:Yeah bit of a dissapointment today...

An awesome lighning display from the east at the moment, probably on the coast near Oamaru and Timaru, or out to sea. Very bright, some huge flashes. No thunder audible from here in Omarama.

You guys with access to the lightning detectors should be seeing some good images and have a better idea of its location.

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Sat 08/01/2005 00:12

Jasestrm wrote:Yeah bit of a dissapointment today but unfortunatly thats summer for you here in Canterbury you get that cloud coming in off the sea with inland heat so yeah.
But I did check before and the lower cloud is breaking in the sky funny low cloud is the only cloud you can see at night.
Yeah a good Thunderstorm to the south not quite sure to where it's tracking it's sorta back and forth at the moment near elesmere very amazing storm too with heaps of strikes popping up in that area.
Iam going to have to find out and see which way it's going to track or else I will will just go to bed.
Iam off to Wanaka for a week until the 19th tomorrow so wish me luck for good weather although I do like the rain on the tent.
Cheers have a good week everyone and who knows what this storm to the south is going to do tonite my guess is it will move out to sea and disipate but shes certainly a beast out there lots of strikes.
JASON TIPPET.

Have a good holiday in Wanaka and if a thunderstorm does pop up, have a good fart to add to the excitement

I know that I did and have it recorded on tape for all to enjoy

You would of heard it at the NZTS meet at Steven Graham's house

Sfreics is calming down abit according to the radio, so storm now dissapating or moving out to sea.
Roll on the boring 8/8 grey cloud cover tomorow and southerly winds

No more thunder activity/propects for a while now

JohnGaul
NZTS

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Sat 08/01/2005 01:12

Yes you should be getting a good show Gary. I can actually see the faint flashes from way up here!

Me and Steven Graham saw good looking congestus out to the west so went out that way and the cloud started to glaciate indicating Cb when we got there. The base was dark and big drops of sporadic rain was falling but nothing was happening as the case seems to be lately. We were near the Colgate area if I remember correctly. We watched this cloud slowly move more eastwards and I think we may have seen a possible funnel but it's quite suspect. It was a small lowering on the back of the congestus which was twirling and sucking up etc and rotating but I'm not sure if it was a genuine funnel, looked quite interesting. This cloud then seemed to disapate, why! I'm not sure but it did....pitty.

So in short we saw more towers go up etc but nothing substantial. Later on in the evening when it was dark me a Steven saw those strikes on the tracker which looked like the Rakaia Huts but it actually wasn't, it was further to the South than that. We went out and then actually saw some resonable flashes in the car just out of Templeton with I think some Cg way to the SSW but I guess just too far away to be concerned about. Even when I got back home I can see distant flashes from that Cb way down near and off the Waitaki coast.

A not so interesting day but the bit of lightning at the end was cool, Steven G may have got some on the video camera so we'll see.

I can't seem to upload pic's to my website at the moment so I'll do them here. First two are possible funnel, it doesn't look like much but was quite vigorous in it's movement. Still I'm not convinced it was. Second lot are just some pic's of the first and most promising cloud we saw close to us all day near Colgate.

Great to see you got out Chris! There was some footage of hail and heavy rain that caused flash flooding down in Southland the other day, that wasn't you with your handycam was it!? Recently there has been activity from around Timaru southwards mainly because the upper air gets colder the more south you go yet the land doesn't get colder aslong as there is sun on it. Infact it probably get's a bit warmer in central areas, we all know Alexandra gets quite warm in summer so I guess that why these areas have great success in getting storms. This high coming over soon, it isn't all going to be bad news I'm thinking. The upper air coming with it isn't all that warm, it'll be around -18 to -20 at 500mb so with ground heating we could see some inland storms build up in the central Otago areas again, wait and see I guees!

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Sat 08/01/2005 01:14

And second two.

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Sat 08/01/2005 07:03

Aaron your photo's show weak convection, little in the way of hard cloud edges, may be an okay Cu in your third photo. Funnel clouds are associated with very strong convection.
Atleast you had a nice day down there, it's been overcast here for days.

Looked like there were some strong Thunderstorms over parts of Otago and Southland yeterday.

GreggWard · Unread post by **GreggWard** » Sat 08/01/2005 11:18

There has been a lot of lightning aroun Wellington and the Cook Strait this morning, picked up on Trevor McGavin's lightning detector:

http://202.0.33.40/weather/lower_hutt/g ... um_day.png

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Sat 08/01/2005 11:22

it looks like there is a couple of storms there, one in the sounds and then one further east of wellington!

Willoughby · Unread post by **Willoughby** » Sat 08/01/2005 11:40

First sunshine hit Hamilton here this morning since Tuesday, must be some sort of record...

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Sat 08/01/2005 11:45

Foggy Hamilton wrote:First sunshine hit Hamilton here this morning since Tuesday, must be some sort of record...

Don't get sunburnt

JohnGaul
NZTS

NZstorm · Unread post by **NZstorm** » Sat 08/01/2005 11:51

Still cloudy here in Ak but cloud looks like it will break up. We havn't had a sunny day in 2005 yet. But the outlook is for finer/stable conditions over NZ. So we may get a taste of summer yet.

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Sat 08/01/2005 11:52

Aaron J Wilkinson wrote:Yes you should be getting a good show Gary. I can actually see the faint flashes from way up here!

I went out and had a look at various times between 11pm and midnight but neversaw anything.

Judging by what you and Steven and Gary saw, there must of been an awesome lightning show off the coast of Timaru/Oamaru.
Shame we have not any members down there to record the event.

Steven's lightning tracker had the storm just south of Lakes Ellesmere but judging by the sferics it seemed further away than that.

JohnGaul
NZTS

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Sat 08/01/2005 11:56

NZ Thunderstorm Soc wrote: Steven's lightning tracker had the storm just south of Lakes Ellesmere but judging by the sferics it seemed further away than that.

JohnGaul
NZTS

I know I went out for abit of a look but was disappointed too

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Sat 08/01/2005 11:56

NZstorm wrote:Still cloudy here in Ak but cloud looks like it will break up. We havn't had a sunny day in 2005 yet. But the outlook is for finer/stable conditions over NZ. So we may get a taste of summer yet.

Yes Steven, it looks like it, may get warmer westerly conditions later next week

Grey and gloomy in ChCh this morning with a light SW. No sign of the substantial rain yet the MetService predicted

JohnGaul
NZTS

Gary Roberts · Unread post by **Gary Roberts** » Sat 08/01/2005 12:06

NZ Thunderstorm Soc wrote: Shame we have not any members down there to record the event.

JohnGaul
NZTS

I'll be asking friends in both towns whether they or anybody managed to get pics or video.

The action looked to be at very high altitude, btw. We were viewing it down the Waitaki valley, and a good 120km inland from the east coast, but the flashes were easily visible, and up high.

Michael · Unread post by **Michael** » Sat 08/01/2005 12:33

winds starting to pickup now should be galeforce later this weekend

Skywatcher · Unread post by **Skywatcher** » Sat 08/01/2005 13:05

Steven's lightning tracker had the storm just south of Lakes Ellesmere but judging by the sferics it seemed further away than that.

I'd adjusted the ranging number to try to improve the accuracy for storms in N Canterbury but this has made storms over the sea about half the distance they should be. It's even worse at night as Ricky has mentioned

Cut the number back again to see if that helps and it seems to be better with that storm SE of Wellington this morning.

The action looked to be at very high altitude, btw. We were viewing it down the Waitaki valley, and a good 120km inland from the east coast, but the flashes were easily visible, and up high.

From what I saw on Tuesday and last night you can see flashes above storms out to 150km or more from a dark site. A lot further than I would have guessed !

ricky · Unread post by **ricky** » Sat 08/01/2005 13:51

The correlated data was working really well this morning

Gary Roberts · Unread post by **Gary Roberts** » Sat 08/01/2005 14:35

Steven Graham wrote:From what I saw on Tuesday and last night you can see flashes above storms out to 150km or more from a dark site. A lot further than I would have guessed !

Agreed. These were spectacular. They lit the place up as if they were overhead, not 120km distant or more. The light was blinding if viewed directly. It was like a camera flash at close range.

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Sat 08/01/2005 19:47

There was nothing on the news about it just the boring negative attitude news reports about the summer so far by the media:x

JohnGaul
NZTS

NZ Thunderstorm Soc · Sat 08/01/2005 22:18

100% humidity at 9pm this evening.
Haven't seen a 100% before.
13c with a dew point of 13
Still raining with 19.4mm falling since 4pm today

..also some sferics going off to, but too cloudy and wet to observe, could be way out to sea off BP

JohnGaul
NZTS

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Sun 09/01/2005 00:35

There was some news reports on the flooding etc down Otago way on the news, that in a sense is related to the activity down south. Maybe not the Cb your talking about but definately that area of activity.

To my surprise there was actually a couple of strikes somewhere over me yesterday from a Cb no doubt! I never noticed a thing but when I looked on Steven G's tracker I was shocked to see some strikes very close to me, unfortunatley 20 minutes old. My Dad heard me going off and said "I thought I saw some flashes before", I was like "What!!! And you didn't tell me!". I was a bit dissapointed, here a thunderstorm nut living in the house and he didn't tell me about some flashes he saw. It showed me how much I miss a thunderstorm no matter how small it is. Later I was to find out he thought it was the TV reflecting in the windows behind him and he thought it was odd but thought it must've been the TV hence he didn't tell me. All in all he said he only saw two so I guess it's not that bad, but lightning is lightning! I didn't notice any thunder due to it being probably drowned out by the heavy rain on the roof. It had been raining quite hard for the later part of the day, I've recorded 32mm for yesterday so that's not to bad. It's calmed down alot since then but it's still raining outside, just not hard.

This high coming over could be interesting, don't discount it.

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Sun 09/01/2005 09:39

we had 22mm over night here