What would New Zealand’s history be like without the First and Second World Wars? Blame the terrible Russian winter and Napoleon’s folly according to historian Adam Zamoyski in his riveting book 1812 Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. The losses suffered in the invasion, particularly to his cavalry, ensured Napoleon’s downfall the following summer. That led to an aggressive Germany unified under a militaristic Prussia while in Russia, the Tsar came to believe he was God’s instrument on Earth.
A Look Back at Summer
By John Law, MetService Meteorologist
MetService Satellite Dish Installation.
A satellite receiver ("dish"), for improved reception of data from polar-orbiting weather satellites, was installed at MetService Head Office in Kelburn in February 2013.
Benefits
Polar-orbiting weather satellites yield rich information about the atmosphere, valuable for New Zealand weather forecasting. Benefits of faster access to more data, and sharper identification tools, include:
Why it Was So Dry in February 2013
During the summer of 2012-2013, anticyclones dominated the New Zealand area. Many places had little or no rainfall since early February.
The map below shows the average mean sea level pressure over the New Zealand area over Jan/Feb 2013. There's no doubt about the pressure being high and not changing very much. Because this map shows averaged pressures, we don't see the few troughs that passed across Aotearoa New Zealand during that time.
Bugs in the weather radar
If you were looking at radar imagery overnight Thursday 21 February 2013 or this morning (Friday 22 February 2013), you could be forgiven for thinking that there was quite a lot of light precipitation over the northern half of the North Island and west of Auckland.
It’s a fine day. Isn’t it?
What do we mean when we say the weather is “fine”? The word fine is often used to convey the positive attributes of something. It is synonymous with good, well, enjoyable.
How are you? I’m fine!
How was the movie? It was fine.
This is a fine bottle of wine.
When we write weather forecasts we define the term fine to mean that the sun casts sharp shadows. If cloud is thick enough to stop the sun from casting sharp shadows then, even if it doesn’t rain, we don’t think that’s a fine day.
Weather Place Names
Written by Erick Brenstrum and originally published in the New Zealand Geographic Issue 111 Sept-Oct 2011
Our Weather Stations – considerations about their location
Written by Ross Marsden, Meteorologist.
During spells of fine sunny weather, there are often many comments about the air temperatures shown on our web site, where they are measured, and opinions about them. In this Blog post I will explain the reasons for the location of our weather stations. I will also offer some help about how you can get some use from the information they provide.
MetService in the Tropics
This post looks at some of MetService's activities in the southwest Pacific, particularly a severe weather project and the training we have provided to individual countries over the last 7 months.
Convergence Lines and Sea Beezes
In the English language we have many words in common usage that have related but more specific meanings in a scientific and mathematical context. The key word of this blog post, “convergence”, is a good example of this. We sometimes hear of people’s views on some matter initially disagreeing and then, later, coming together or “converging”. In fluid dynamics we’re often interested in regions where different air flows come together. We call this type of flow convergence, and say that the air is converging.