The Country 25/08/25: Phil Duncan talks to Jamie Mackay

Monday's resident weather expert on the arrival of spring patterns.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's kick it off with our weather man. On a
Monday fell Duncan and fell on and it's our of
the Bay of Plenty, and I can tell you what
they get plenty of rain here. Jee's been torrential in
parts over the past few days.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, gooday night to be back with you. These downpours
around the Upper North Island have been yea, quite widespread
over the weekend as you point out, and bringing hail
and slow moving gown paws. So bit of a frustrating
weekend if you're trying to sort of plan outdoor stuff
with some of those downfall. Some of them were expected,
some of them weren't. And it's gradually today going to
break up as high pressure continues to move through the country.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Mind, Jude, the South Island's been enjoy enjoying a bit
of a not balmy patch, but certainly a fine settled patch,
because there's a big high plunked over the South Island
at the moment, really.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Big high, and that high is drifting eastwards this week.
In fact, in a day or two, there's going to
be basically high pressure between New Zealand and South America
just filling up the whole southern hemisphere. But that's to
our east. So what does that mean behind it? Welcome
to spring, and I don't mean that in a necessarily warm,
sunny way. I mean that in a windy westerly way.

(01:06):
The windy westeries are kicking in later this week, over
the weekend and into next week. So this is going
to be the first big westerly blast that we've seen
in a while, with potentially severe gales. And what it
does is it brings in a balancing act for the rainfall.
You ask people in northern Hawks Bay and Gisben tight
Arter the East Cape, they are well and truly over
the cloud and the showers. So these windy westerlies could

(01:28):
be just what the doctor ordered to get a spring
in your step to those eastern areas. But it will
bring in wintry weather to the South Island, snow in
the mountains and rain back to the west coast where
it should be falling and not so much over in Canterbury.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Fella. Of course, spring is the most unpredictable or unsettled
of the full seasons. Nothing unusual in these weather patterns.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, I'm actually sort of stressing in the last week
or so that we really have two main seasons. We've
got winter in summer, and so spring and autumn are
all about the last season you've just had fading away
and the next month coming in. And I say that
because a lot of people are surprised, I mean your
audience not so much, but a lot of people are
surprised that you get winter storms in spring. And so

(02:11):
we always say it's just winter slowly fading away, tints
of summer coming in, and hopefully we will start to
feel that more and more. But there's always a heightened
risk of a snowstorm as we get into September, that's
for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
We're getting very close to September. What are we five
or six days away? And you know, I'm guilty of
saying August and September, September, especially September very important farming months.
Obviously carving sort of getting tidied up. But for the
sheep farmers anyhow, lambing September is very much a key month,
especially the further south to go. And of course for

(02:42):
the arable farmers who are trying to plant stuff, get
stuff in the ground, they don't want it to be
too wet, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
I mean, if you're in the eastern side, in the
very north of the country. Then the next seven days
are going to be windy and sometimes warmer than it's
been in previous weeks. So it's not so bad for
a lot of populated sort of farming areas, but if
you're on the western and southern ends of both main islands,
then you are likely to be getting more cloud, more wind,
and that colder air is certainly going to be around

(03:10):
the South Island's west coast and the southern half of
the South Island. In fact, the polar airflow will go
right up to the top of the country by Sunday,
but being westerly driven, to me, that's just a lot
more normal weather. But it does give you an indicator
that as we end the final day of August, which
is Sunday, and go into September on Monday next week,
it is going to be windy, cold, showery in a

(03:31):
number of places, but eastern areas will be the driest
the looks of it.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Now, I've got a personal interest question, sorry for the
rest of the country, but I'm involved in a farming
operation down in South and we had the worst September
or close to it ever. We're just rained incessantly. It
was a terrible spring for the farmers at the bottom
end of the South Island, and I know other places,
and I think of our friends in the Nelson Tasman

(03:56):
region have had it tough this winter. But what about
spring for the south.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
You know, it's funny. I was talking to your friend
Andy Miewer the other day about this very thing, and
I was saying to him that the temperatures in Southland
at the moment are looking spring light. And by that
I mean, you know, a high today of fourteen or
fifteen in Gore and then down to minus one tonight,
but in a couple of days time, the overnight low
jumps up to seven degrees and then next week we've

(04:21):
got maybe snowshowers around on Sunday, or at least wintry
weather with a high of just six. So we've got
about thirty millimeters of rain or more coming into Southland
over the first week of over the next seven days
to ten days, with these wintry baths coming in and
peaking on Sunday. So it's it's classic late winter early
spring weather as far as Southlands consent.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
And you're not going out. I was going to say,
how many days we've got to go out? Twelve days,
September sixth, Eighten Park, Springbok test.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Well, i'll tell you what. After this windy westerley we've got,
there is some long range modeling that suggests as we
get to about that time in September, high pressure could
be returning. That's normally the balance of things, So fingers crossed.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Okay, Pell duncan always appreciate your input here on the country.
Thank you very much for your time.