Kia Ora from across the ditch, will try to keep this updated..

Well the last few days a subtropical disturbance off Brisbane developed and tracked southeast.. hit an incoming trough of low pressure.. and a nice wee low has formed generating widespread heavy rain and southerly storm-force winds effecting the Cook Strait, Wellington and Wairarapa. (Yesterday Brothers Island was averging 110km/h/60 knots for the most of yesterday!, 7m swell!!)
That has resulted in flooding in the Hutt Valley with calls for the National Crisis Management Centre to monitor the situation.
Catchments in the Wellington region valleys have been recording some 250mm+ from this event.. and more set to fall.
News link re Wellington floods

Showery and gusty north of Taranaki at the moment, fine and frosty over most of the South Island today. Dunedin AP sitting on -5°C at the moment.

Obs, (You guys have no idea how hard it is to gather this, most of which there will be official data bettering this )
Centre with Tmax: Whangarei, Gisborne - 15°C
Lowest Tmax: Queenstown, Christchurch - 6°C

Some essential NZ wx links:
MetService
NZ Weather Forum
NZ Snow Reports

Oh! And my website:
Hamilton Weather

:cheers:

hey Willoughby!

im actually going over there next week!

spare of the moment decision

hope the snows nice over there because it certainly isnt here.

Great stuff Altitude! In years time you wont regret it one bit. Hopefully the weather puts on a show, outlook is grim with rainy warm northwesterlies on the cards through next week.

Today saw early very loud thunderstorms move over Southland with associated westerly gales.. they persisted throughout the day, as well as coastal Otago with damaging gusts to 120km/h with the leeward northwesterlies.

Hawke's Bay, Gisborne and the far north reached 17C.
Min-max was Queenstown, warm on 9C.

Typical strong westerly weather over NZ today with Milford in Fiordland getting 55mm.

Good news with the state of emergency being lifted off the Rangitikei district after flooding.

This flooding should be happening on ur side!

Spring-like conditions and warmth over NZ today due to a westerly belt.. rain in the South Island's west and dry and fine elsewhere apart from a few coastal showers in the far north.

Tmax: Napier/Bay of Islands - 18C
Min-Tmax: Hokitika - 11C

Northwesterlies still prevailing and becoming wet.. looking good late this week for a strong icy cold change and the return of fine weather over Queenstown Lakes.

Thanks Willoughby, the weather links are handy as I'm off to NZ south island next week. Looking forward to 8 weeks of tramping, photography and general touristy-ness.

If I could place an order, Id like:
- severe frosts in the Naseby-Ranfurly area on the rail trail,
- torrential deluges at Milford Sound. I've seen it fine and sunny and would love to see the opposite
- some low-level snow. The pictures I saw of lake Tekapo after last month's storms looked awesome

But really, anything cold and bleak would be welcome after the fine and sunny non-winter here in Perth.

arent all thunderstorms loud

Well FS you are definitely a lucky one to see Milford Sound with sunny and fine weather, I would think that is a rare event down that way. I have tried to get there 3 times in 3 different seasons, though admitably not Summer! and every occasion the weather stopped me, twice we couldnt get there by road as the road was closed to avalanches and once we could have got there by road, all be it a 400km detour, though the forecast was for rain/showers with heavy falls, which down that way mean really heavy rain! So if you want to see Milford with torrential rain, just make sure I am planning a trip there!

Though I am planning a trip to Abel Tasman NT in the north of the South Island for the end of the year, so I am sure the links and info on here will come in very handy over the next 4-5 months

Though the weather gods have treated me to pre-easter snow in Tekapo which is quite unusaul so I am not completely jinxed!

Nope. Thunder is usually louder within cold, sea-ward cells as the air has to expand quicker upon lightning discharge as upposed to warm, land-convected cells. (assuming factors like CAPE etc. is the same)

That's great news FS.. looks like beautiful dry southeasterlies will set itself over the west of the South Island by this weekend after heavy northwesterly rains. And you can expect some record-breaking frosts in Central Otago by the look of the models.. with a blocking high developing.
Make sure you share your photos with us!!

NZ's record low temperature was recorded in Ophir, Central Otago of -21.6C on 3 July '95.
Hmm that may be under threat soon??

Today saw the wind tend NW over NZ.. leeward high cloud over the South Island's east and rain in the west, partly cloudy skies mainly in over the NI.

Gisborne today reached 17C, but with a dewpoint of 6C however.

Some YTD rainfall figures collected by the MetService, note higher anomalies this year of east to northeast winds from La Nina? causing easterly-depressions.
Auckland Ap: 617mm (par)
Tauranga: 627mm (par)
Hamilton: 775mm (wet)
Rotorua: 1006mm (extremely wet)
New Plymouth: 521mm (well below average)
Wellington: 531mm (par)
Christchurch: 401mm (extremely wet)
Dunedin: 357mm (par)

I was wondering, which part of NZ has the most similar climate to the UK (Summer average max around 21ºC, Winter average max around 6ºC), with occasional snow in winter, and occasional heatwaves in summer (temps near 30ºC), I would guess that it is somewhere in the south island.

Hi Willoughby

Great site you got there regarding Hamilton's weather. I was there in February and one thing that stood out for me was the humidity. Bad, and it was worse in Auckland. Interesting pics you had there regarding the tornado last year. My sister lives in Hillcrest, not far from where the action was so the area looks very familiar to me.

oh, well there you go learn something new every day I stand corrected.

Just raining here again like it does for the next 5 months

That's a tough one UK Steve as our latitude is just too low for the low temps you guys get in the UK.. but for those temps it would have to be some place like Tekapo in the MacKenzie country, at 683m ASL. Rainfall average is 597mm, too sunny with 2217 hrs.. and 176 ground frosts p/a.
Down there they don't exactly have 'heat waves', but hot, dry windy days due to the foehn 'nor'westers' which can last up to 4 days at a time if a high plants itself over the western Tasman Sea.

Thanks Mechsta, yes we did experience a high dewpoint outbreak in that swapover Jan-Feb period.. but the plus side to that was that it teemed down with rain afterwards in the afternoons.
Yeah, Auckland is more humid year round due to the rarity of winds coming of the southeastern land.. putting a city on a skinny isthmus doesn't help much ay all either!

This is one of my faviourite weather sites, the Lake Tekapo Webcam . Great to watch during a cold blast or any time of the year really. They have just upgraded the cam so you can control it too! you can zoom and direct the cam, though haven't done so myself as it is rather popular at the moment!

They also have a great collection of pics from the recent snowfalls around Tekapo.

That is quite a good webcam Tim..

Destabilising conditions over NZ today with showers increasing in the west. Few thunderstorms moving onto Taranaki, and soon, Fiordland.

Tmax today: Napier/Hastings and the far north on 18°C
min-Tmax: Timaru on 10°C

SWW's are in place now on the West Coast for heavy rain, and severe gale warnings over Central NZ.

What a day!
Had thunderstorms, some severe, move over from Hamilton southwards.. My rain rate got up to 5.2mm/min with hail, new record for my station.



Hamilton at lunch time..


Dewpoint up to 12C today, very high for mid-winter, provided a lot of lift and convection to fire up over inland here.

Queenstown warm on 10C, and Kaikoura got the national high of 18C.

We actually had some damaging F-1? twin tornadoes on Wednesday.. just 4km SE of where last year's tornado ripped through.
Greymouth and Hamilton would undoubtedly be the southern hemisphere's versions of tornado alley.. but so much on a lower scale! the strike rate is amazingly high.

Active front through over the NI early Thursday, delivering some nice falls in the west.
A weakening through brought squally showers and hail to Fiordland under a weakening through. These two, now stalled fronts, set to loop around a broad low generating heavy rain to Gisborne/Eastland throughout Friday.

Napier scored the national high of 17°C

Keep that rain Aussie.. or send it elsewhere, please? Progged deep low after low.. getting a bit bored with it! XD

Southerly gales returned to Wellington today and heavy rain to the east of the North Island along a warm front. With recent flooding to the SE NI, the API figures would be rising to extreme soon.

Coastal cloud brushing onto the eastern South Island, but fine and sunny elsewhere in the south.
1000hPa low departing now slowly to the ENE.. should be mainly fine over NZ for a good few days until this low off Aus comes through and develops a string of easterlies over the NI.

The weather turns the opposite against the norm under this southeasterly component.. warm in the west and cool and wetter in the east.
Rain and gales has eased in Wellington and the lower eastern North Island. Drizzly over coastal Canterbury, and some various cloud over the sheltered NI.

Tmax: Levin, Hamilton, Tauranga, Far North - 17C
Min-Tmax: Queenstown - 7C

Thought this was a very nice example of lenticular cloud, over Mt Ruapehu.. humid northerly seeping through on July 3


Source: Metvuw

talked to some relatives in gisborne herad it has been raining. it alwasys is!!??? grrrr

willougby lets do a swap you can have our 5 months of drought and 2006 yearly average so far of 140mm out of a possible 860mm and we can have the cool wet weather!