The Country 20/07/26: Phil Duncan talks to Jamie Mackay

Monday’s resident weatherman says a wintry blast is on its way.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wrapping the country for a Monday. Phil Duncan from weather Watch,
he's very excited. He's launched a new lightning app, but
maybe failure chose the wrong time of the year to
launch it. Not much lightning about at the moment, my friend.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
No, good day, thank you. Yes, you know where the
Watch has launched the new Zealand Lightning Tracker and we're
working with met Service. We've got their data in it
and so this is the sort of that used to
be run by Transpower, so it's a very good network.
But you are right, we've chosen unfortunately, a very quiet spell.
From the six point.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Of view, I reckon like November would be a much
better time. We get thunderplumps then and a bit of lightning.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, I'll promote it every time there's a thunderstorm, rather
than just saying it's all here now. But yeah, we've
got we manage some thunderstorms later this week because we've
got a proper wintry blast on the way and it's
going to cover the whole country by the weekend. But
the airflow with it may be a little bit more southwesterly,
which usually means from sort of dene to northwards if

(01:01):
you're on the eastern side of the country, it may
not be too bad cold, but it could still be
quite sunny and dry. But before that arrives on the Friday,
which is when it properly comes into the South Island,
there could be some snow flurries where you are in
the Denedan area. And we are expecting snow down to
maybe only a couple of one hundred meters for a

(01:21):
time around the South Island and maybe sort of five
or six hundred meters for a brief time around the
North Island in the lower half, and one thousand meters
for the top half. So it's a proper wintery change,
but the wind direction will mean some sunny, dry areas
in the mix as well. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I was going to say fell shock, horror, snow and winter.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, it's been a while since we've talked about snow
and d Eden. We've had it sort of on the
ranges and on the mountains, but we haven't had many
low level snow events this year. This could be a
lower level snow event, more so for Southland maybe and
to the Audland. But it's worth just monitoring. If those
winds change direction, it could change the forecast quite a
quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
So normally after a spell like that, we get a
big high coming in and then a fine paerod and
if we've had meaningful snow or cold temperatures, the big
e flood comes into play.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Frost, Yeah, I think I think there will be frost around.
Maybe not initially for everybody going into the weekend because
there'll be wind blowing along with it that usually keeps
the temperature up a degree or two, but that will
change by the end of the weekend, and so yes,
going into next week could be very frosty for some
inland areas. In fact, that could start as early as
the weekend if you're in a sheltered part of the country.

(02:33):
But there is more high pressure coming in it. We're
seeing some enormous high pressure zones stretching, you know, twelve
thousand kilometers across coming through from Australia from the Indian Ocean.
That's no change this week as well. More of that,
and Australia gets the cold blast too, but only for
two days Wednesday and Thursday, and then it's replaced by
high pressure which will eventually make it to us.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Okay, Phil, you'll forgive me for not playing around with
your lightning app. This morning I was watching Grant I
was going to scratch Fox. Let's try the other fox,
Ryan winning the British Open or the Open. Hey, thanks
for her time. They'll always good to chat.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
All good. Thank you,