The Country 18/02/25: Phil Duncan talks to Jamie Mackay

Monday's resident weatherman makes a belated Tuesday appearance as we ask for rain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fell Duncan joins us out of weather watch and I'm
looking at a Met Services issued a severe thunderstorm watch
for large parts of Southland. I hope some of it
lands on some of our farming blocks. Smiley, we need it, Smiley,
let's try Fell Duncan. Hello, phel Hello, and you've always
got a smile on your face. Away you go tell
me about well, tell me about the rain around the country.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, we've got these big downpours moving through today. There's
a lot of low pressure around and part of the
low pressure that's over Southend and Otago today has come
down from the Tropics and that's merging with the low
and the tasmum that's even larger. All of it's falling apart.
But you add that low pressure with instability plus summer
daytime heating, perfect recipe for those really heavy downpours. Fingers crossed,

(00:43):
you get exactly what you need around South and and
Otago's things dry out there, and it's good to see
some of these downpours hitting the West coast, which is
also dry. It's pretty fair to say that almost all
of New Zealand now is getting drier than usual. Art
for at least from a soil moisture deficit point of view.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
The parts that really need the rain. Those the is
the north and east of the North Island. That's right
north and west, sorry, north and west of the East
of the North Island apologies.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
If you go from National Park Mount through Apahu area
and just go straight west to the Tasman Sea, that's
the area. So places like tom at Anui and King
Country that's a drought zone. And you got that drought
sort of meteorological drought rainfall deficit spreading over into parts
of Tatanaki, Wanganui, Waitomo, South Waikato and then along the

(01:31):
whole western side of New Zealand is very dry at
the moment. So some rain today is going to be good,
some more showers tomorrow, but we really do need to
look for a tropical low or something much more substantial
to really reverse this.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, and you were telling me when we were chatting
earlier this morning that most places are going to be
dryer in a week's time than they are now unless
they get lucky with one of these thunder plumps.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, that's right. These downpours can break that forecast. The
overall modeling goes well, we can a few showers, but
you know, mostly high pressure coming back in again. But yeah,
you get one of those big downpours, you can get two, three,
four times the amount that was forecast and so that
can just locally give you more than other people. But
we are seeing a lot more high pressure coming through

(02:16):
this weekend. At the same time, the tropics is very busy.
Several low pressure systems up there, two of them, one
over the Coral Sea, one mere Tongua within the next
week a likely to become either a tropical low or
a tropical storm. That's worth keeping an eye on.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Pell Duncan, thank you so much for your time. Always
good to have you on the country. There we go.
Pell Duncan from weather Watch, New Zealand's leading weather man.
Just ask him. Yeah, I was just looking at the
severe thunderstorm watch for South then downfalls localized downfalls with
rainfall rates of twenty five to forty mills per hour.
That's quite a bit of rain and a short period

(02:53):
of time.