The Muster- Phil Duncan: Weather Watch

Phil Duncan looks at a balmy start to June in the south.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
He's so live you remember that, says the Muster on Haki.
Time to catch up with full Duncan out of weather Watch,

(00:33):
coming up five years and five years of Alanas Morris
said on the Muster, a full Duncan of weather Watch,
the premium weather presenter of New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Get a thank you, Hello, good to be with you.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
You always got to catch up mate. Look it's so
it's Barbie almost for four hours going to say summer.
It feels like summer. We're only a couple of weeks
out from the winter solstice aka the shortest stay full.
Are we going to see a change of this weather
system because it is unseasonally warm and eerily warm.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah it is. It's certainly mild across the country. And
we've seen you know, Wellington broke their June maximum record.
They got to nineteen degrees both on June first and
June second, warmest that they've ever been in June since
records began. And part of the reason for that is
we had a high pressure, very strong, high precious system
out east of the Chatham Islands and because it was

(01:21):
such a large system, it was pulling down all the
subtropical air followed by low pressure leaving Australia, which is
doing the same thing, and it's doing that today bringing
down this warm and northerly flow across New Zealand. Now
it well changed this weekend. We get a colder change
this weekend and in fact, you guys in Southland get
brushed by the polar boundary, so that means there'll be

(01:41):
a little bit of snow on the mountains and a
temperature dropped the windshill. You'll notice that going into the weekend,
going through Saturday in particular and Sunday morning. But yeah,
the overnight temperatures are not that bad. I mean they
go down. The lowest temperature is three degrees on Wednesday
night next week and the warmest overnight lows ten degrees,

(02:03):
which is this Sunday.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Ten degrees overnight low.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Overnight low as ten. Maximumbers eleven on Sunday and then
the overnight low is ten so that's you know, that's
again the northwest of picking up on Sunday night before
the next cold change comes through on Monday with a
little bit of wet weather. But yeah, it's very mild.
It's mild all over New Zealand, and we've had this
incredibly settled May, which from a nationwide point of view

(02:29):
is very calm. We have yet very hw severe weather
the warnings issued and it was just a very dry
month in most regions, drier than normal and many many places.
And now we get a bit of a change. We're
getting low pressure out of Australia. It just brought a
whole lot of rain and thunderstorms across Australia and some
severe gales as well. But that low is falling apart

(02:51):
as it moves over the South Island today, so we've
got it's a bit of a woozy kind of autumn
going into winter. And because these always talk about our Nino,
were wondering now how much that's playing a role in
the weather that we're getting, because our Nino tends to
encourage more high pressure in the Tasman Sea, and that's
not always a warm place to put it, because we're

(03:12):
on the west, the southwesterly wind side of high pressure
when it's parked in the Tasman But if it's if
it's a little further northwards than they have been late,
they've been centered north In fact, without a high pressure
system at the start of this week. That was up
right up near Fiji, which is unusual, and it does happen,
but it's unusual, it doesn't happen very often. And so

(03:33):
we are getting a bit of a change. And so
while with our Nino, you measure the sea temperatures at
the equator north of Tahiti and so in that area
it's much warmer than average, and west, you know, north
of Vanuatu, it's cooler than average. And what that tends
to do is create more high pressure around eastern Australia
northern New Zealand, and so we get a lot of

(03:54):
west to southwest winds with our Nino. That's what causes
the trout because the rain getting pushed into the west
coast and not much getting over into the east coast.
And at the moment, I think because we're in neutral still,
we're not officially yet in al Nino, but we're getting
the building blocks starting to show up. And I think
that's part of the reason why we've had fairly settled

(04:14):
weather with these highs crossing us, and also not a
lot of really polar weather coming into us, not yet.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Anyway, what to so, Sam, what are we looking at?
Are we starting to get cooler in a couple of
weekspads right now.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
My mat that I'm looking at goes out to the
twentieth of June, so round about then, and that forecast
looks a little bit al Nino like where you've got
high pressure building around Tasmania and it looks like maybe
a polar change coming into the South Island, but a
lot of westerlies, so west coast heavy rain. Southland gets
clipped by some of that, especially coastal parts of Southland.

(04:50):
It fades up more as you go into northern Southland,
but the temperature is going down, so we are getting
a variety of weather. But that same weather map also
shows heavy rain the North Island and low pressure before
all that coming through. So I think western areas are
likely to get more rain and eastern areas are likely
to just perhaps see more of a dry, dry sort

(05:11):
of theme coming through.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Are we going to get unseasonable wins at the moment
as well? Does that come into the equation with us.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
I'm not really seeing anything too out of the ordinary
at the moment. With the wind there is like this
time of year is usually windy, especially autumn. The autumn
side of things been pretty quiet this year, but the
high pressure zones are very powerful. Some of the one
that's forecast Monday, the fifteenth of June is expected to

(05:38):
be on ten forty four Hector pascals east or southeast
of you guys, so between sort of the Chatham Islands
and Stuart Island, but a little bit further to the south.
Now that's still a long way out. That could still change,
but the fact that the modeling is saying, you know,
ten forty four Hector pascals, really it's a powerful high

(05:59):
pressure system and that's about, you know, about as strong
as they get in New Zealand. And so when you've
got big highs like that, it can be very windy
around the outer edges of it. So we could get
some wind and we could get some easterlies. I think
at the moment, you know, when we talk about our Nino,
that's based on what we know from the past, and
we haven't had loads of our Nino that you've got,

(06:20):
you know, it's not like we've had one hundred ol
Nino events and we can go through all the data
and go, this is what happens. We've had, you know,
in our lifetimes a handful or two, and so you've
got limited kind of data on that, and New Zealand
has very limited data anyway, because we commercialize it, we
don't make it public so much, and that means we
actually don't really learn a lot from these events. And

(06:42):
on top of that, the world is warming up, so
you've got a warmer ocean and warmer air around us,
and that could really change what our nino means. It
could be a positive thing because it could mean we
get better chances of rain. That's what usually happens when
it's warmer. So I do still see more variety coming
through this month. I think we're going to be another

(07:03):
month away before we can really kind of get a
feel for what our Nino might do, because I think
it is likely to be happening. I think the modeling
is pretty certain of that, pretty sure of that. But
whether or not it actually is as bad as previous
ones or some sort of hybrid, you know, that, that's
what we're not really sure of. And I'm noticing that
even Niewer or Earth sciences in New Zealand are saying

(07:25):
similar things. You know, they used to be quite ahead
of these events and they'd be quite certain of what
was going to happen. I've noticed that their language around
this is similar to mine, which is that there's a
little bit, you know, it's a little bit murky water.
On this one, we're not really sure what it means
for New Zealand. Maybe we'll have to wait until it's
formed officially for us to really be able to know
a bit more.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Bill don can always appreciate your time. Good night, Seattle
still Dugan. If we to watch Fraser Traine reference there
mad Fraser fan is Phill Duncan to Weather Watch Gun
follow them as social channels as well. Do is a
fantastic job regarding the forecast for Southland up next Matt

(08:06):
Ward and before the end of the year with Morgan
Mitchell retiring South and Stagg he's my father from me