The Country 29/09/25: Phil Duncan talks to Jamie Mackay

Wet and windy, cold and dry, and warm nor-westers. It's rinse and repeat for the weather.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's a punt in the dark, Phil dunking to you.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
There, I'm here now.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Where were you before?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I don't know. The phone wasn't connecting properly for some reason.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
I was muttering nasty things about you. Phil. You're leaving
me high and dry, but you've come to the party now.
Talking about high and dry, that's a really clumsy segue
into some parts of the country, and it's a bit
worrying because we're not even into October yet. Are starting
to get away but dry?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, they sure, I'm good to be back with you. Yes.
The warmer weather, they're certainly starting to kick in, and
obviously windy spring wheather is likely to carry on. In
my video today, I talk about this sudden stratospheric warming
which has been talked about quite a bit around Antarctica,
and what that means for us whether ways. Basically, what
it means in a simple way is that the storm

(00:53):
south of the country you're going to be a bit
more intense this spring, and so it doesn't necessarily mean
we're going to be hit by them a lot, but
it does mean that the weather pattern will be more
spring like as we go through this season, which means
we may kind of see a spring pattern caring on
into December this year, which is not a great thing
for those Eastern areas that need some rain. The good
news is we do have some low pressure in the

(01:15):
mix coming in this week. Won't deliver a huge amount,
but there could still be ten millimeters or so maybe
a bit more falling in some of those dry Eastern areas.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
So basically, if you're looking for a I don't know
a blueprint for the next couple of weeks, is it
just run and repeat from the past couple it sure is.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
What we're seeing though, is a bit more injection of warmth,
so it's not as cold every day. You know, we're
seeing subtropical airflows and Australian air flows coming into the mix,
whereas across most of August and much of September we
were defined by the polar airflow that was stuck over us.
So we're getting more into a spring pattern where it's
warm one day, t shirt, where the one day put

(01:51):
on the jacket the next. No end in sight for that.
But if this is a textbook spring, then I would
expect oc Tober to have more settled and warm days.
But we were not done yet. With the lows and
the severe weather events.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Interestingly, when I look at NEEWA was soil moisture deficit
map as opposed to the drought map, and I look
at the historical long term average for September the twenty eighth,
that's only updated till then, and then I look at
the map as of September the twenty eighth, which was yesterday.
There's not a hell of a lot of difference. So
maybe it's kind of just the usual.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Is it it is? I mean, we're getting a few
grizzles here and there now, more than we had maybe
a month ago. Around Taranaki, Waikato Koldaki Plains. Farmers are
telling me turn the tap off, please, we've got enough.
And then you're over in Hawk's Bay and you're hearing
people there saying we could do with rain. We would
love to have a solid day of rain. So we're
not quite perfect, but yeah, there's nothing too alarming standing out.

(02:49):
The grizzles are really at the lower end of the
problematic scale. But I do think Hawks Bay is an
area to focus on because they've been dry all year
in a rainfall deficit. So even if things are kind
of roughly normal on the soil top at the moment,
generally speaking, that area is in a bit of a
rainfall deficit, so we could do with some reindeer, but
there's nothing too big coming in just yet.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Okay, Phil Duncan thank you very much for your time
as always on the country on a Monday. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Thanks mate, appreciate it too.