Written by Wayde Beckman from the Health Sponsorship Council.
February 2011
“I got windburnt today.” “My lips feel windburnt.” It’s something we hear from time to time (and even say ourselves) to explain red, sore, dry skin or lips after being outside. And in this glorious country of ours, it’s hard to be outside and not feel the sweet caress (or fierce pummeling) of the wind. But what is windburn? And can the wind really burn our skin?
Tropical Cyclone Yasi
"Past Weather" is a feature on our Metservice.com "Towns and Cities" pages and is located on a tab for the relevant location.
This graph shows the elements for Yesterday, the Last 30 Days, as well as Historical Data on a calendar monthly basis.
The data is detailed further upon mouse-over and includes:
- the highest wind gust
- the direction the wind was blowing from
- the highest and lowest air temperatures; and
- rainfall
Here's an example for Auckland Airport for "Yesterday":
Dr David Fountain, Pollen Forecaster (retired).
Addendum added on 20 Dec 2010 with images from Malcolm Potts
Written by Wayde Beckman from the Health Sponsorship Council, on 11 November 2010
Who would have thought in November, when temperatures struggle to get over 20 degrees in some New Zealand places, that ultraviolet (UV) radiation levels are already high enough to cause sunburn and put Kiwis at risk of developing melanoma skin cancer?
This blog post is the third in a three-part series discussing verification of MetService forecasts. Here, we present the method used for verifying Severe Weather Warnings, along with some recent examples.
This blog post is the second in a three-part series discussing verification of MetService forecasts. Here, we present the method used for verifying maximum and minimum temperature in city forecasts, along with some recent examples.
This blog post is the first in a three-part series discussing verification of MetService forecasts. Here, we present the method used for verifying rainfall in city forecasts, along with some examples.
In 2007 our weather radar network looked like the picture below. The dark part of the circle is the area / range in which the radar is very accurate and the lighter range is useful as a heads-up. New modern radars send out both vertical and horizontal scans allowing us to not only determine the presence of rain but the volume as well. This is really handy for forecasting and tracking storms and severe weather.