The Country 19/05/26: Phil Duncan talks to Jamie Mackay

Monday’s resident weatherman, on a Tuesday, comments on the impending Super El Niño and how worried we should be about its imminent arrival this spring.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Weather on the country with Fiji, where happiness comes naturally.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Turn you Mike can't Fell Duncan from where they watch
a favorite weather man on a Monday. On a Tuesday,
he phil this super al Nino of the talk is
getting really serious around this. And I'm old enough to
remember as a kid the drought of seventy two seventy three.
Also we know ninety seven ninety eight was an absolute shocker,

(00:30):
the likes of in places like Marlborough. How concerns should
farmers be in the drier regions of this country for
spring and summer?

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, good a, Jamie. I think that water conservation is
something that we probably need to have top of mind
going through the next few months ahead, sort of thinking
about conditions drying out. There are a couple of things though,
to focus on. One is that the world is warming,
the sea is warming, the air is warming compared to
those previous al Nino events, and so there is a

(00:59):
little bit of an un factor about what that might mean,
and it could mean, you know, maybe we still get
some chance of rain around us. Also, it's worth noting
that ol Nino's measured north and northeast of Tahiti quite
a long way away from New Zealand and so Australia
New Zealand area can be on the edge of it,
which means the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea can
still produce rain rain makers, and so when you look

(01:22):
at the next sort of fifteen days of where there
is a lot of rain falling north of New Zealand
and west of US and on the West coast as well,
so that bodes well that we're still in neutral. We're
not in Aldinho at the moment. It is likely to
happen at some point during our winter, I believe, and
the Australian Bureau of Meteorology they're also saying while confidence

(01:42):
is pretty high that it'll be a moderate al Nino event,
there's still a bit of a question mark as to
how strong it will be. So there are still a
lot of unknowns about it. But I think if we
just go by history, water conservation, keeping top of mind,
how much water you've got and how much rainfall coming up,
those are the things that usually affect us obviously the

(02:03):
trying out phase. And there's another positive at the moment
we're not really being hit by the windy westerlies, which
is another hallmark of our Nino. So for now we
are still in neutral and there are still some rainmakers
coming in over the next few weeks.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Okay, Philet's given though that the east coasts of both
islands will suffer the most, right.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, Usually our Nino produces more haigh pressure around the
Tasman and what that does is produce south to southwesterly
winds and westerly winds over the country, So the west
coast gets very wet, the east coast starts to dry out,
and we are seeing some signs of that at the moment.
But then that's also a normal weather pattern to have
during autumn. So at the moment, yeah, it's hard to

(02:44):
kind of see it developing around us. But I think
in another month we'll start to have a much clearer
picture as to how much this is going to affect us.
But for now, it's still neutral, so that's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
At the moment, many of us have got a nice
big high sitting over the country. Fine frosty weather, love
winter or early into lights autumn or weather like that
will change, though normally around a long weekend a Squeen's
birthday going to signal the weather God's getting even.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
At the moment, it looks as though because we are
in this neutral phase that usually means that you've got
low pressure following high pressure. We've got a lot of
high pressure. It's been very very dry in some areas
over the last several weeks. We do have some heavy
rain coming this week for the West Coast, could be
over a couple hundred millimeters falling there, and around the
North Island the numbers do vary anywhere from just ten

(03:31):
millimeters up to about fifty just depends on where you are,
and the eastern side of the South Island looks the driest,
especially around Otago and up towards parts of South Canterbury.
So at the moment we are seeing a little bit
of wet weather and that will be followed by more
high pressure to finish out the month, and then going
into June we may well kick off with high pressure
followed by yet another low coming in from the west.

(03:52):
So those low pressure zones, they're very very welcome at
the moment.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Soil Duncan usually on a Monday, today, on a Tuesday,
that was worth the white Thanks for your contribution.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Thank you