When I was biking to work this morning I noticed prolific amounts of pine pollen in the puddles around Westhaven.

If you were in New Zealand in the mid '70s you may remember a particularly strong wind-storm that devastated many parts of the eastern South Island. It struck on 1 August 1975, doing a huge amount of damage to pine trees in the Eyrewell and Balmoral forests in particular. To give you an idea of the power of this storm, some of the peak recorded winds and gusts were:

 mean wind (including gusts and lulls) strongest gust Christchurch Airport 126 km/h172 km/hTimaru Airport130 km/h165 km/hEyrewell Forest119 km/h170 km/h

Written By Chris Webster, Meteorologist

In my previous blog post I wrote about how the winds high in the sky differ from the winds we usually experience on the surface of the Earth.

From Wednesday 01 July 2009, MetService has been providing a Severe Thunderstorm Warning Service. This blog entry explains why we are able to do this, why warnings of thunderstorms are different from warnings of broad-scale weather events, which parts of New Zealand they will apply for, how you can receive them and what actions you can take to protect yourself.

Written By Chris Noble Meteorologist

A call for a new name for a variety of cloud.

Written by Chris Webster, Meteorologist

Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, Sailor’s warning. I'm not going to argue about shepherds and sailors; that’s not important here. The questions are: “Is it a useful saying? Does is work? If it works, why?” And, “Why is the sky blue?”

Written by Bob McDavitt, Meteorologist

Today’s weather map shows how this cold southerly is being produced by a combination of a HIGH or anticyclone in the Tasman Sea, and a LOW or depression between Canterbury and the Chatham Islands. For want of a better phrase, we could call this an eggbeater southerly.

May 4th/5th 2009

I work as a public forecaster and my main tasks include writing regional, urban and mountain forecasts. I either work mornings (which start at 5:50AM and finish mid afternoon), or afternoons (which commence mid afternoon and run until 10:45PM).