Speaker 1: Gielder. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. A
Speaker 1: warmer winter is coming now. This means a few things.
Speaker 1: Power bills might ease up for those of us who
Speaker 1: are heated dependent during chilli.
Speaker 2: Nights, which is a positive right.
Speaker 1: However, these conditions won't be great for those heading away
Speaker 1: for ski season.
Speaker 2: And while the powfer jackets can stay in.
Speaker 1: The wardrobe, perhaps those rain ones will be getting a
Speaker 1: workout because with a warmer winter comes rain. Today on
Speaker 1: the front Page, NIWA forecaster Chris Brandolino is with us
Speaker 1: to give us a glimpse into what the weather might
Speaker 1: look like in the months ahead. Chris, it felt like
Speaker 1: we had a very wet autumn. Every week there was
Speaker 1: some warning as thunderstorms or severe rainfall.
Speaker 2: So exactly how wet was it, it depends on.
Speaker 3: Where you were.
Speaker 4: Now, look, we'll be issuing our Autumn Climate Summary, which
Speaker 4: is a retrospective look at the autumn season. Marjor Abile
Speaker 4: may not to come, I think later this week, let's
Speaker 4: say maybe Thursday, believe, but just in the spirit of
Speaker 4: a sneak peek for friends, it really depends on where
Speaker 4: you were. So for example, Northland, you know, was quite wet,
Speaker 4: So Kaitaya had one hundred and seventy five percent of
Speaker 4: normal rainfall. Typically Kaitaya will get about three hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty one millimeters of rain, but they had well over
Speaker 4: five hundred millimeters of rainfall for the autumn season, so
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 3: Pretty wet there.
Speaker 4: But look if you go to places in different parts
Speaker 4: of the North Island. For example, if you were to
Speaker 4: go to say mant Rupehu right at the chateau, they
Speaker 4: only had two hundred and four millimeters, that's only a
Speaker 4: third of what they normally get, so quite low rainfall there. Likewise,
Speaker 4: and Thames they only had seventy six percent of normal.
Speaker 4: But you're right, there were certainly a lot of places Nelson,
Speaker 4: I'm just looking and scanning. I list in front of me,
Speaker 4: over toward winch More and over toward Lincoln Broadfield, christ
Speaker 4: Church had a pretty wet autumn and a lot of
Speaker 4: that was off the heels of say one or two
Speaker 4: big rain events. So yeah, it was certainly wet from
Speaker 4: many areas of New Zealand for the autumn season, but
Speaker 4: it was not wet everywhere was.
Speaker 1: It unusual the places that did it experience a wet autumn.
Speaker 1: I know autumn and winter can obviously be wet seasons,
Speaker 1: but the severity of it in some places seemed a
Speaker 1: little unusual.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Again, there were the big couple of big rain events
Speaker 4: we had and that caused some flooding. Think of what
Speaker 4: happened in Nelson with those downpours back in late May,
Speaker 4: and that was a very short but sharp rain event,
Speaker 4: and you know we had a lot of rainfall and
Speaker 4: in just three or four hours we.
Speaker 3: Had some flooding.
Speaker 4: I think we had parts of Northland had some minor
Speaker 4: to modest flooding going back to earlier in the autumn season.
Speaker 4: So yeah, there were I don't think there were the
Speaker 4: really high end rain events that caused significant flooding. We
Speaker 4: did have the big rain events. That one event that
Speaker 4: maybe is a standout in terms of flooding. So if
Speaker 4: you remember Banks Peninsula and areas around christ Churts, they
Speaker 4: had a state of emergency and they had you know,
Speaker 4: I think one two times normal what they would typically
Speaker 4: get in April, but it fell in basically a couple
Speaker 4: of days, so you double the amount with falls in
Speaker 4: thirty days but you're getting it in a couple of days,
Speaker 4: and you know, we get some big problems. We had
Speaker 4: the red warning for Wellington that was for the wind event,
Speaker 4: so that wasn't really rain, that was a strong wind
Speaker 4: event there. So yeah, so it was an active autumn,
Speaker 4: but like a lot of times, it came and fits
Speaker 4: and stops. We had some extended periods of dry weather.
Speaker 4: We had dryness and drought going back to the late
Speaker 4: summer early autumn in places like Tenanaki, places like southwest
Speaker 4: Wakato and the Manawatu King Country had some pretty dry
Speaker 4: conditions and some of those areas I've still seen dry
Speaker 4: soils right now, particularly in the Manawatu region, and soils
Speaker 4: are usually dry for the time of.
Speaker 3: Year out of there.
Speaker 6: Well, winter is upon us, but of course what can
Speaker 6: we expect. You know what, you may need to buckle
Speaker 6: your seatbelts. It could be a wild ride. There's going
Speaker 6: to be a bit of everything into the mix. As
Speaker 6: far as things go. We could have, of course, some
Speaker 6: pretty good storms. We could have some cold outbreaks good
Speaker 6: for the skiers, and we're going to get some fine
Speaker 6: days as well. When we look at the atmosphere, there's
Speaker 6: going to be lots of variety, so we're going to
Speaker 6: mix things around. It's like some flour, some extra sugar,
Speaker 6: mix it round, and some spice and bomb you get
Speaker 6: all those things going on. Warmer than normal.
Speaker 2: So let's look ahead to winter.
Speaker 1: I've sayen that it's going to be warmer than usual
Speaker 1: but still quite wet.
Speaker 2: So what sort of weather systems are we looking at here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're right, a couple of ways to answer that.
Speaker 4: So in summary, we are expecting a warmer than average
Speaker 4: winter as a whole. Now I'm using my words carefully
Speaker 4: as a whole, because if you've seen the weather predictions
Speaker 4: for later this weekend, the weekend, there's going to be
Speaker 4: a significant cold snap, and you know, you maybe think, well,
Speaker 4: Juice christ you said it was going to be warmer
Speaker 4: than average winter, how come WI is it going to
Speaker 4: be so cold this weekend?
Speaker 3: Well, both can be true.
Speaker 4: That's because we give a three month outlook, not a
Speaker 4: three day outlook. So a three month outlook there is
Speaker 4: a lot of water to pass under that bridge. And
Speaker 4: this is just one weekend of thirteen for the winter season, right,
Speaker 4: So we are expecting this pretty big cold snap Friday,
Speaker 4: Saturday and Sunday, and that may come with some snow.
Speaker 3: To low levels.
Speaker 4: We'll see Even if the snow to low levels or
Speaker 4: a meaningful amount of snow to low levels does not
Speaker 4: occur Friday into Saturday, it will be darn cold with
Speaker 4: squally day on Friday, with showers and thunderstorms, maybe some hail.
Speaker 4: But unfortunately, if you're a skier or a snow enthusiast,
Speaker 4: or feel like cold temperatures for that matter, I don't
Speaker 4: think that cold snap that we're going to see from
Speaker 4: Friday into the weekend is going to have much staying
Speaker 4: power and we're probably gonna warm back up.
Speaker 3: And that will be the theme for the winter season.
Speaker 4: That is, yes, we'll get cold snaps, but we're probably
Speaker 4: gonna get less of them than what is typical, and
Speaker 4: that is because we're expecting air flows for the winter
Speaker 4: season less. So look, you don't have to be ANEWA meteorologists,
Speaker 4: you don't have to be a rocket scientist. You know
Speaker 4: it ain't gonna get cold if you don't have a
Speaker 4: cold wind direction. It's very simple in that regard. Now,
Speaker 4: the trick, of course, is trying to isolate and determine
Speaker 4: and pick what is that overall wind direction wind to
Speaker 4: being that can be challenging. Our sense is that yeah,
Speaker 4: there will be souther least, but they're going to be
Speaker 4: more infrequent than usual, so we're not gonna see a
Speaker 4: lot of them. We'll see more northeast and northwest winds
Speaker 4: than usual. So again, more northeast and northwest winds than
Speaker 4: usual doesn't mean every day, every week, every you know,
Speaker 4: month or hour of the winter. It just means more
Speaker 4: than what is typical and that will drive temperatures up. Also,
Speaker 4: our ocean temperatures are running warmer than average around New Zealand,
Speaker 4: and that means it'll be hard to sustain for long
Speaker 4: cold snaps. The one we're going to see this this
Speaker 4: upcoming late week and especially this weekend which may kind
Speaker 4: of sneak into Monday, that will last three or four
Speaker 4: days or so. But you know, we're not going to
Speaker 4: see these cold snaps that last you know, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 4: nine days.
Speaker 3: It's just not going to happen. Be very unlikely anyway, should.
Speaker 1: Say, yeah, when we speak about a warmer winter, I'm Australian,
Speaker 1: so I think anything under eighteen is cold. Sure, So
Speaker 1: so what kind of temperatures are we talking when we're
Speaker 1: saying it's warmer than usual.
Speaker 4: It depends, like it depends on where you are, what
Speaker 4: you call home. But just by way of example, the
Speaker 4: winter average, So this is like, this is a lot
Speaker 4: of assumption. So we're taking we're a we're smoothing things
Speaker 4: out over three months, right, and we all know how
Speaker 4: there can be variability. Look, this is a climate I'm
Speaker 4: going to answer your question. Just give me a second.
Speaker 4: This is a climate Outlook, what we're attempting to do
Speaker 4: is predict Mother Nature's personality over a three month period. Right,
Speaker 4: weather is Mother Nature's mood. Now, if if we if
Speaker 4: we kind of get mother Nature's personality correct or at
Speaker 4: least in the right direction, on more days than not,
Speaker 4: the mood will align itself with the personality. But in
Speaker 4: some days it won't. So there's a lot of Smoothingess
Speaker 4: what I'm saying now, The typical mean temperature that's the
Speaker 4: average for say Auckland for the winter season is eleven
Speaker 4: point six degrees. So that means if you take the
Speaker 4: high and the low for each day during winter and
Speaker 4: you add it up and divide by what it's in
Speaker 4: ninety one days or whatever, the number of days is
Speaker 4: you would get eleven point six. What we're saying is
Speaker 4: that the mean temperature for the winter season, our expectation
Speaker 4: is to be higher than that. Now, for Kaitaya it's
Speaker 4: twelve and a half degrees, but for Dunedin it's seven
Speaker 4: point three. For christ Church it's about seven and a
Speaker 4: half seven point four. So what we're saying is that
Speaker 4: for the winter season, our expectation is that where we
Speaker 4: land come September first winter is in the rearview mirror,
Speaker 4: the mean temperature will be higher than that. But that
Speaker 4: can come in many ways, you know, just like I
Speaker 4: can tell you if you run a business right and
Speaker 4: I say, hey, for the next three months for the winter,
Speaker 4: you're going to have above average profits, You're like, sweet, awesome.
Speaker 4: But does that mean every weekend is going to be
Speaker 4: above average profits?
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 4: That could come in the form of one really crazy
Speaker 4: month where your profits are just out of control. You
Speaker 4: have crazy good profits for one month, and then the
Speaker 4: second month maybe.
Speaker 3: They're about average.
Speaker 4: They're okay, they're not great, they're not awesome, they're okay,
Speaker 4: and then the third month are below average. But guess what,
Speaker 4: because that first month was so extraordinary high with profits
Speaker 4: that really swamped out or muted out the other two
Speaker 4: months which did have a factor, but when it all
Speaker 4: came out in the wash, it was still above average.
Speaker 3: Profits same before their temperature.
Speaker 4: We could have one month where it's so exceptionally warm
Speaker 4: that the other two months, I don't want to say
Speaker 4: almost don't matter, but they become less relevant in terms
Speaker 4: of trying to influence what that final number is. So
Speaker 4: this is a longer term outlook, and these outlooks are
Speaker 4: trying to identify themes, and that theme is for warmer
Speaker 4: than average temperatures, and these things can be hard to communicate,
Speaker 4: and for someone listening to this, they can be like,
Speaker 4: what the.
Speaker 3: Heck does that mean? How can I make a decision?
Speaker 4: Well, what it means is that if we're going to
Speaker 4: see less cold snaps now, less cold snaps is not
Speaker 4: zero cold snaps, I e. What will happen this weekend.
Speaker 4: Maybe it means you're run your heater less frequently. Okay,
Speaker 4: Maybe it means that you can enjoy more days outside
Speaker 4: and not be so cold more days than usual. Anyway,
Speaker 4: Maybe it means if you're a snow enthusiast, if you're
Speaker 4: a snowboarder, if you're a skied Well, maybe that means
Speaker 4: you're simply not going to have a great season. Potentially,
Speaker 4: I think the North Island ski fields maybe especially challenged.
Speaker 4: We'll see what happens for the South Island ski fields.
Speaker 4: Warmer than average winter for South Island ski fields, well,
Speaker 4: if you're high enough in the altitude, it could still
Speaker 4: be warmer than average, but still.
Speaker 3: Cold enough for snow.
Speaker 5: In Europe had to use helicopters and trucks to carry
Speaker 5: snow to the Bear slopes in order to stay open,
Speaker 5: and in Japan, energy costs were so high that they
Speaker 5: had to keep the machinery shut down and just wait
Speaker 5: for natural snow to fall down the sky. Snow cover
Speaker 5: is projected to shrink globally as the planet worms, So
Speaker 5: this is a challenging future for ski resorts.
Speaker 1: How concerning is it that the temperatures will be kind
Speaker 1: of warmer than usual? Is that another sign of climate
Speaker 1: change or does it just happen in every now and again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, both are true.
Speaker 4: Look, grass will grow by itself, right throwing fertilizer, that's
Speaker 4: a much different story and it can overcome a lot.
Speaker 4: Same thing with athletes. Athletes are high performing, they're talented, people.
Speaker 4: You give them HDH or steroids, they can perform a
Speaker 4: lot better. Look, climate change doesn't cause extreme weather. Here's
Speaker 4: what climate change does three simple things. It makes extreme
Speaker 4: events more likely. It makes extreme events, extreme weather events,
Speaker 4: more frequent, and it makes them more extreme, more likely,
Speaker 4: more frequent, more extreme. I didn't say it creates them.
Speaker 4: It does not create them because this has always happened
Speaker 4: in the past. We've always had extreme events. And what
Speaker 4: is an extreme event. It could be too much rain,
Speaker 4: too little rain, both ends of the spectrum, really high temperatures,
Speaker 4: really active weather. So climate change because of a warmer
Speaker 4: earth that energizes the atmosphere, and you tend to hit
Speaker 4: those extremes more likely to hit them, more frequent, and
Speaker 4: those extremes can be more well extreme. How concerning is it? Well,
Speaker 4: warmer than usual winters, it's become almost background noise because
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people are used to hearing it,
Speaker 4: at least that's my sense. Maybe I'm wrong, and what
Speaker 4: happens is that something maybe it becomes normalized. But in reality,
Speaker 4: when we see warmer than average conditions and you see
Speaker 4: the trend, that's the concerning part is you see how
Speaker 4: these are becoming more common and more frequent. So look, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: when in twenty twenty five, if it turns out to
Speaker 4: be warmer than average as a whole, Again, that's over
Speaker 4: a three month period when you're smoothing out the peaks
Speaker 4: in the valleys, When you compare it to a winter,
Speaker 4: and say two thousand and ninety, so twenty ninety, that
Speaker 4: may actually be a cool winter. So in other words,
Speaker 4: if you take winter twenty twenty five, if it turns
Speaker 4: out to be warmer than usual, and you hop pop
Speaker 4: it into a time machine and you exit that said
Speaker 4: time machine, and you're in the year two thousand and
Speaker 4: ninety and you're armed with winter twenty twenty five, odds
Speaker 4: are that'll be a cool winter.
Speaker 1: And finally, Chris, I know that we always ask you
Speaker 1: this when you're wrong, but can you look into your
Speaker 1: crystal bowl and do we know anything about what spring
Speaker 1: and summer might look like yet?
Speaker 3: Dark nights, bright days? Does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Look, when you're going out several months, three months, that's
Speaker 4: a challenge. But when you go out six nine months,
Speaker 4: you can imagine that's even more challenging. So the short
Speaker 4: answer there is there's a little bit of insight. The
Speaker 4: longer answer is what you need to do where a
Speaker 4: person like myself who's in this sort of business, is
Speaker 4: you try to identify a climate driver, and we do
Speaker 4: this with even our three month outlooks and a climate
Speaker 4: driver basically as well, who's at the steering with Mother
Speaker 4: Nature's car? Who's driving the car? If you know who's
Speaker 4: driving the car, odds, are you know which direction you're
Speaker 4: gonna favor or lean toward? Now at the moment, we're
Speaker 4: not in Linina or in El Nino. You probably heard
Speaker 4: of those things, especially al Ninho. Those are climate drivers.
Speaker 4: We call that enso e nso ens sands for El
Speaker 4: Nino Southern oscillation.
Speaker 3: It basically means are we.
Speaker 4: In El Nino, are you in lia Nina or what's
Speaker 4: in the middle, which is neither.
Speaker 3: Right now we're in neither. We're neutral.
Speaker 4: However, we are coming out of Lininia, which was last summer,
Speaker 4: and there is fore casts to be this Linina. I
Speaker 4: don't want to call it a hangover, that be li
Speaker 4: Ninia kind of tendencies, These Linina like conditions. The you know,
Speaker 4: we got to we like to put things in nice
Speaker 4: even bins and keep a clear cut in reality life
Speaker 4: is not a light switch. It's a spectrum.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's not on or off. There's a lot of spots
Speaker 4: between zero and one, on and off. And it's the
Speaker 4: same thing with and so and lino self and oscillation.
Speaker 4: So while technically we are in neutral, we're actually on
Speaker 4: the Lainia side of neutral. Okay, well, what does that mean,
Speaker 4: Smark I. Well, typically when we have Lninia, we tend
Speaker 4: to favor airflows coming from the northeast to the east,
Speaker 4: the north somewhere in that direction, and that tends to
Speaker 4: favor wetness for the eastern and northern North Island, tends
Speaker 4: to favor dryness for the western part of both islands,
Speaker 4: which is why we had that dryness and drought for
Speaker 4: the western North Island. If we recall Tedanaki wat Cutha
Speaker 4: were quite dry, even western parts of the South Fountain
Speaker 4: that had a great summer. By the way, if you
Speaker 4: talk to people in Westport, Hokitik in host A Fjordland,
Speaker 4: great summer sunshine and warm temperatures, dry weather, and the
Speaker 4: indications are that sort of airflow may be favored as
Speaker 4: you work away into spring or summer. So this warm
Speaker 4: theme may persist if our airflows don't come from a
Speaker 4: coal direction, i e.
Speaker 3: South or southwest, something.
Speaker 4: Like that, and that may favor wetness for northern and
Speaker 4: eastern parts of the country as we work away into
Speaker 4: the spring and summer season.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Chris, You're.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thanks for having me, and hopefully that was useful.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at enzdherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
Speaker 1: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 1: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front
Speaker 1: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.