The Country 05/12/25: Chris Brandolino talks to Hamish McKay

Our weatherman from Earth Sciences NZ on the December forecast, where things are heating up across the country.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Weather on the country with farm lands helping to prevent
parasite outbreaks this summer. Okay, from Earth Sciences in Zig
Chris Brandolina, who joins us Now, good afternoon, Christie. She's
been a bumpy all week across the country.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
It has a good afternoon, Hey, mish. It has been
a bumpy old week. But we're gonna settle down for
much of the much of the country as we work
away for the next several days. There will be some
areas that get rained, but I think dryness and heat
will be grabbing weather headlines over the next several days.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Okay, Uh, that's that's a good, a good thing. I
suppose out of that bumpy whether that certainly I know
one or two down the sort of the east coast,
I guess you've got to say, and people make I
can't miss out the tower Ruha district here, but the
northern wab Tartua and the southern Hawks, byy, they they
would have got so much needed moisture. They did.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
In fact, you know, right before our conversation, you know,
uh the phone ring we started talking. I just opened
up my colleagues hotspot Watch, which is a document that
will be issuing hopefully this afternoon we'll be on our
website and this basically talks about where rainfall is expected
over the next week, as well as where the rain
fell over the previous week and understanding where the driest

(01:14):
soils are. So hopefully a handy document for the audience
and for the farmers. Certainly they know they're paddock just
as well, if not better than anyone else. But it
kind of gives a lie of the land of terms
of what's coming. And I gotta tell you, if you
are listening from the eastern part of either island, but
in particular the eastern part of the North Island, there
is gonna be some exceptional early season warmth. It looks

(01:35):
like starting this weekend parts of Hawk's Bay we could
see maximum temperatures on Sunday approaching thirty four to thirty
five degrees or higher. Yeah, during and now this will
be Hawk's Bay, maybe Tadafadi Gismon that sees the highest temperatures,
but look even places in the Auckland region, in the Wakato,
in the Northland region, it will be well into the
twenties and some places maybe flirting with thirty degrees. So

(01:59):
it'll be a hot one weekend for sure, and that
heat is likely to persist, certainly for the Eastern North
Island for much of next week. Now the Eastern South
Island we'll find this kind of roller coaster ride. It's
near thirty and Dunedin as we speak in Musselboro. We'll
find the temperatures cooling off Tomorrow, warming back up Sunday,
cooling off Monday, warming back up Tuesday. Quite literally a

(02:20):
roller coaster. So not a study that heat, but the
rain or lack thereof, I think Hamish is something we
have to be mindful of. I know we've had some
decent rain for the Upper North Island and the Upper
and Eastern North Island, so the Bay of Plenty and
Northland and Auckland and the Coramandel and parts of the Waikato.
And that's a good thing because we're gonna see very

(02:40):
little rain over the next two or three weeks, so
that'll give us a buffer zone. But for our friends
and other parts of the North Island, I am concerned
that as we work toward you know, in the days
leading up the Christmas, we could start to see the
I guess the effects of significant dryness that rap it
onset this time of the year, we're losing five six,
seven millimeters of moisture to the atmosphere because of the

(03:01):
strong sun. So you know we got to replenish them.
If we don't, over the course of several days and
the weeks, we start to feel those impacts.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah. I was thinking as you signed that about these
warm temperatures over the next Wagos saw and there are
a roll on a fix of that. I know it's
going to be good too, or three weeks a good
way to get shearing done, get a lot of jobs
done pre Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, we'll be hiking for a
bit more of the weight stuff, I guess in certain places.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, and that's kind of congruent with our summer outlooks.
So just earlier this week we did issue our summer outlooks.
So this isn't a weather forecast as we most of
us know. This is kind of a think of it
like a theme outlook. What are the themes for the
next three months as a collective, basically December, jan and
feb And for December at least kicking off summer it
is dry. And as for probably the Upper South Island too,

(03:45):
can't forget them and much of the North Island. I
think as we go into January, we're going to see
our air flows change. Our expectation is that we'll see
more in the way of regular and frequent east to
northeast airflows as we kind of emerged past that first
week or so of January. Timing with these things are

(04:05):
always challenging, but when that transition does happen, Hamish, with
the change of airflows comes a change in rainfall pattern.
So we are thinking that dryness is something will have
to be monthlap for the summer as a whole for
the entire South Island full stop, albeit it'll be a
wet start for the western South Island. That's not going
to last forever though that will change with the airflow change.
But for the upper North Island, so for the Bay

(04:27):
of Plenty and the coreambandal Auckland Northland, the areas that
are going to be dry in December we think will
actually flip toward a wet lean as we go into
January and especially February with that change in airflow, so
it may be tough to find that goldilock zone. We
may be on the dry end of the spectrum for now,
and we may transition to the wet end of the
spectrum with maybe some heavy rainfall events we have to

(04:49):
be concerned about as the second half of summer unwine.
So yeah, it heads up on that and it's going
to be a warm summer. Look, we think there's about
a two to three chance that the Upper North Island
as a warmer than average summer, and for the rest
of the country there will be a warm lean. The
confidence is not quite so high. We could find some
cool spells in December. I think December will feature cool
spells for much of the South Island, with persistent warmth

(05:12):
more likely for the North Island.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
They got a great rep there from Chris Brandolino from
uh uh.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Oh yeah Earth sciences were yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
I wanted to make sure I got it right, so
I write it down. Then I couldn't read mind hand
run it anyway.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Thank you very much to thank you Jeez Dressing