MetService Blog

by Meteorologist Claire Flynn

Please note: all times listed below are New Zealand local time.

History

This guest blog was produced by Cancer Society NZ.

Sunburn now could lead to melanoma skin cancer later in life – no matter what your age or skin type.  This is a lesson learnt too late and it can be started early by educating children to become Sunsmart savvy.

By Emma Blades, Meteorologist.

Here’s an explainer on the difference between the rain radar imagery and rain forecast imagery available on metservice.com and how to use them.

Rain radar

By Emma Blades, Meteorologist

Please note all times are in New Zealand local time.

By Emma Blades, Meteorologist

Tropical Cyclone Tuni was located 270km south of Samoa today at 1pm (New Zealand local time). It remains a category one cyclone, although the central pressure has deepened slightly in the past six hours to 991hPa. Winds close to the centre are still expected to be a sustained 75kph.

By Emma Blades, Meteorologist Tropical depression TD03F was upgraded to a category one cyclone yesterday evening and named Tropical Cyclone (TC) Tuni by the Fiji Met Service. On Saturday evening TC Tuni passed to the southwest of Samoa. Radio New Zealand reported that Samoa had been battered by torrential rain on Saturday evening with reports of flash flooding across the island of Savai’i. At 7.00am this morning (New Zealand local time), TC Tuni had a central pressure of 993hPa and was positioned 160km southwest of Samoa.

By Emma Blades, MetService Meteorologist

A tropical depression, identified as TD03F, is gradually deepening near Samoa and could be upgraded to a tropical cyclone later today. You can see the location of TD03F at 11am 28 November 2015 in the infrared satellite image below.

There’s been a lot in the news in recent months about El Niño. See, for example, the latest monthly outlook, and an ABC news story. Here’s a ‘back-to-basics’ description of El Niño. To start, the chart below shows a climatological average of air pressure at Mean Sea Level over the central and South Pacific.

The Auckland forecast for Monday 12 October included mention of the following: '... isolated showers ...' and ' ... southwesterly winds ...'. From time to time you’ll hear the word 'isolated' in weather forecasts, so let’s see what it means with reference to observational data, some of which is available on www.metservice.com.

The Japan Meteorological Agency recently launched a new geostationary weather satellite called Himawari-8. “Himawari” means sunflower, and the name has been given to a new series of satellites that we can look forward to in coming years. “Geostationary” means the satellite rotates “in sync” with the Earth, always above the same point over the equator. We, in New Zealand, are now starting to receive early data from this satellite.