2022 is one for the record books

With 2022 coming to an end, we thought it’d be timely to look back at the year of weather. Two words come to mind, wet and warm. Low pressure systems from the northern Tasman Sea were frequent around Aotearoa and brought a rise in both the temperature and the amount of rain that fell. Read on to find out more about MetService’s notable weather of 2022.

At Home Meteorological Experiments

If you are trying to entertain the kids at home or are just looking for a meteorological experiment then you've come to the right place!

First up we have the Cloud in a Bottle experiment:

Equipment:
• 1 large clear-plastic bottle with a screw-on top (e.g. a 3-litre juice bottle)
• 1 match
• 1 cup of water

Instructions:
Step 1. Pour the water into the bottle, put the top on and shake it around. Leave it for a few hours so that the air in the bottle gets very humid. (You can do the word find below while you wait)

The Physics of Fog

While the weather conditions that lead to the formation of fog are usually quite benign, fog itself can be very disruptive. In particular the aviation and marine industries are often interested in how fog or mist will affect the visibility for their journeys, though fog also affects road-users.

Forecasts in retrospect: A history of Numerical Weather Prediction

As weather forecasters, here at MetService we spend a lot of our time poring through data: data from weather stations, data from satellites and radar, from weather balloons and also webcams. This information is all useful for understanding what the weather is doing right now – but how do we know what might happen in the future? Understanding the current weather helps us understand what might come next, but information from numerical weather models also plays a very important part.