Speaker 1: Kioda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. New
Speaker 1: Zealand has been experiencing some wild weather this week. Red
Speaker 1: wind warnings were issued for much of Canterbury, Marlborough, Wellington
Speaker 1: and southern Wadded Upper As it yesterday afternoon, flights and
Speaker 1: fairies were canceled and tens of thousands of households have
Speaker 1: been without power. Meanwhile, strong winds have been hampering firefighting
Speaker 1: efforts in several parts of the country. So is this
Speaker 1: usual for this time of year? And how long will
Speaker 1: we have to wait for some sunny days ahead? Today
Speaker 1: on the Front Page, Newer Principal scientist Chris Brandolino is
Speaker 1: with us to take us through what's causing this stormy
Speaker 1: weather and whether there is in fact a lot at
Speaker 1: the end of the tunnel. First off, Chris tell us
Speaker 1: why this is happening, what's causing these high winds across
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 2: Two words pressure gradient, So you may be wondering what
Speaker 2: the heck is that. Basically, yeah, it describes the change
Speaker 2: of air pressure over distance. So think of it this way.
Speaker 2: Replace the term pressure gradient with elevation change. Imagine, if
Speaker 2: you're a cyclist, you're at the top of a hill,
Speaker 2: right and you're gonna go down the hill. You're gonna
Speaker 2: go a lot faster if the hill is steep, right,
Speaker 2: going from the top of the hill to the bottom
Speaker 2: of the hill, you'll go maybe not as fast. If
Speaker 2: that hill is more gentle or not as steep, that
Speaker 2: elevation change isn't as dramatic. Think of high pressure in
Speaker 2: the atmosphere, like the top of the hill. High pressure
Speaker 2: brings nice weather. And for those listening or watching from
Speaker 2: the upper North Island, Auckland and Hamilton and toward Northland,
Speaker 2: we had some beautiful weather on Sunday, going back to
Speaker 2: the weekend, even better weather on Monday, not so bad
Speaker 2: on Tuesday. That was because of high pressure. Now that's
Speaker 2: one end of the spectrum. On the other end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum, low pressure is like a hole in the
Speaker 2: atmosphere and Mother Nature is trying to fill that hole
Speaker 2: with the fluid called air. And so when you have
Speaker 2: high pressure top of the hill, low pressure kind of
Speaker 2: bottom of the hill, or a hole a valley. If
Speaker 2: they're quite distinct in terms of one being high, one
Speaker 2: being quite lower deep, then your elevation change or your
Speaker 2: pressure gradient could be quite dramatic. And that is what
Speaker 2: causes wind, is pressure gradient, the change in air pressure
Speaker 2: over distance. If you think of it like a mountain
Speaker 2: in a hill, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we hear about wind warnings of you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty one hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers an hour, what does that actually look like in
Speaker 1: real terms?
Speaker 2: I think you just go on media right now, social
Speaker 2: media to see the impact. You know, when you see
Speaker 2: wing gusts of you know, one hundred and seventy one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty two hundred k you're getting to like,
Speaker 2: you know, category two, category three tropical cyclone intensity. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is not a tropical cyclone, but it's the intensity.
Speaker 2: You know, you're trying to wrap your head around this,
Speaker 2: and that is what can cause you know, these bursts
Speaker 2: of wind which are wing gusts to three second bursts
Speaker 2: of win That is what generally causes a lot of
Speaker 2: the damage. And we've seen that play out. We've seen
Speaker 2: wing gusts. I was just looking Invercargo. I had a
Speaker 2: win gus to think of one hundred I'm looking off
Speaker 2: screen here one hundred and thirty seven k and over
Speaker 2: toward Gore a wing gust of one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: four k I believe, one hundred Yeah, and at Wellington
Speaker 2: at the airport one hundred and twenty six and Cayle
Speaker 2: Cow and Wellington Kyalkou the mountain there one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty five kilometers per hour. So that type of wing gust.
Speaker 2: If you can't wrap your head around, just go to
Speaker 2: social media and you see like the pine trees leaning down,
Speaker 2: and like a whole row of pine trees over toward
Speaker 2: Hamner Forest leaning down on power lines, you know, or
Speaker 2: roofs being lifted, you know, obviously the trampolines and you
Speaker 2: know any deck furniture things like that that'll be you know,
Speaker 2: that could be k's down the road or you know,
Speaker 2: half k hundreds of meters anyway, Yeah, is.
Speaker 1: This usual for this time of year?
Speaker 2: Uh? Not to this degree. I mean this is what
Speaker 2: the red warning, you know, the red warning kind of
Speaker 2: you know, reflects the unusual nature. We don't see those
Speaker 2: every day, that's for sure. Look, spring is always a
Speaker 2: changeable season. And with that change that that that variety.
Speaker 2: I like to call spring the teenager of season because
Speaker 2: a lot of mood swings ups and downs, and with
Speaker 2: that moodiness comes win. So you know, it's not unusual
Speaker 2: to have windy PIDs in spring. That's part of spring.
Speaker 2: But this is like, this is next level, and what's
Speaker 2: driving that is kind of nerdy. We've had a lot
Speaker 2: of low pressure that whole in the atmosphere I've talked about, right,
Speaker 2: we had a over the subn Ocean, so the Suthern
Speaker 2: Ocean is that big body of water separating New Zealand
Speaker 2: and Antarctica, you know, down to the ice and we've
Speaker 2: had low pressure just favoring and continuously moving through the
Speaker 2: Southern Ocean, brushing against the South Island at times, and
Speaker 2: that has been a big reason for our wind, our
Speaker 2: strong westerly wind. Why is that low pressure in the
Speaker 2: Southern Ocean? Why is it there a lot? Well, believed
Speaker 2: it or not, We can trace that back to Antarctica
Speaker 2: of all places. So at the very top of the atmosphere,
Speaker 2: like way at the very top over the South Pole
Speaker 2: back in September, the temperatures got really warm, really fast,
Speaker 2: at least for that part of the atmosphere. And when
Speaker 2: that happened, kind of jumping to the chase, if you will.
Speaker 2: What that did is that that kind of displaced all
Speaker 2: that low pressure that typically favors the Antarctic region, what
Speaker 2: we call the polar vortex. It basically allowed for that
Speaker 2: low pressure to be displaced into the Southern Ocean, and
Speaker 2: because of that, we now have these strong westerly winds,
Speaker 2: big hole in the atmosphere, if you will, over the
Speaker 2: southern ocean, kind of a decent sized mountain near northern
Speaker 2: New Zealand, and that those two features are creating that
Speaker 2: pressure gradient, that change in pressure or as we said before,
Speaker 2: that change in elevation. And this is why we've seen
Speaker 2: these persistent episodes of high wind. We saw them earlier
Speaker 2: in their week, we see we're seeing them now and
Speaker 2: guess what, we're probably gonna see it again next week
Speaker 2: on Labor Day. So just the heads up for those
Speaker 2: getting a headstart on the unofficial start to the I
Speaker 2: guess summer season, be mindful that Monday of next week
Speaker 2: things are still you know, crystallizing, but there will be
Speaker 2: another low coming from the west and north, and that
Speaker 2: will probably bring with it another round of active weather,
Speaker 2: probably not to the degree we're seeing today, but still
Speaker 2: could be quite impactful because it's a big travel day
Speaker 2: and people will be you know, enjoying the public holiday.
Speaker 2: So that is something we could see again. And we
Speaker 2: could see some really cold temperatures, unusually cold temperatures behind
Speaker 2: that on Tuesday, which could impact farmers and livestock because
Speaker 2: we'renowned to the growing season. So because of these big swings,
Speaker 2: like right now in kai Kota, it got to more
Speaker 2: than thirty degrees today, thirty degrees but yeah, and then
Speaker 2: we're talking about much cooler temperatures tomorrow. Then we're talking
Speaker 2: about temperatures going up on Sunday and Monday, Labor Day,
Speaker 2: then going back down on Tuesday. Those big temperature changes,
Speaker 2: they are congruent with wind. Whenever you have these big
Speaker 2: temperature changes, oftentimes a reflection of those temperature changes up
Speaker 2: and down that roller coaster is strong wind. So what
Speaker 2: we're seeing play out high wind, active weather, big temperature changes,
Speaker 2: they're all kind of connected.
Speaker 1: Have we any idea when things should stabilize?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Look, if you would have asked
Speaker 2: me that, if we were talking like a month ago,
Speaker 2: if you asked me that question, I would have said,
Speaker 2: with a fair bit of confidence, Oh, it'll come right,
Speaker 2: middle second half of October. Well, guess what. We're in
Speaker 2: the second half of October and we're still talking about it.
Speaker 2: What I talked about over Antarctica, that rapid warming at
Speaker 2: the very tippy top of the atmosphere. That's called a
Speaker 2: sudden stratospheric warming event. We just call it SSW. So
Speaker 2: use an SSW drop that in your dinner time conversation.
Speaker 2: You'll raise some eyebrows. That SSW that tends to have
Speaker 2: lingering effects weeks several weeks after. So it looks like
Speaker 2: this sort of pattern where we have active weather, strong westerlies,
Speaker 2: things like that, up and down with temperature. It's probably
Speaker 2: going to continue through at least the rest of October.
Speaker 2: So we got another week or so, and if you
Speaker 2: look at the long range guidance, it actually may go
Speaker 2: into the first ten days of November, so we may
Speaker 2: have to wait until the middle second week, third week
Speaker 2: of November. Once that happens, it will happen eventually. It's
Speaker 2: a matter of being delayed but not denied. But when
Speaker 2: it does happen, the expectation as will have settled weather
Speaker 2: kick in over the country, high pressure and we should
Speaker 2: see a change in the rainfall patterns. So for the
Speaker 2: past couple months, since the beginning of spring, it's the
Speaker 2: west of the South Island that's been getting hammered with
Speaker 2: a lot of rain, mountains, snow, high wind. That's probably
Speaker 2: gonna and we have dry weather for the eastern part
Speaker 2: of the islands, especially up toward Hawk's Bay where they
Speaker 2: have some pretty dry conditions. Once we see that pattern shift,
Speaker 2: our winds are going to shift. And when our wind shift,
Speaker 2: so does the rainfall pattern. So as we work our
Speaker 2: way into the second half of November and into summer
Speaker 2: proper December, January, and February, odds are we should see
Speaker 2: the areas that have been wet Western and lower South
Speaker 2: Island they should become drier, and areas that have been
Speaker 2: dry Hawk's Bay, Eastern Northland, their odds for rainfall should
Speaker 2: start going up. It may take another two three four weeks.
Speaker 2: That happened.
Speaker 1: Our power has gone out in the big Pine Tree,
Speaker 1: one of them has just gone over. There is flying everywhere,
Speaker 1: plastic milk, things flying.
Speaker 2: From god knows where. Stuff is just coming from everywhere
Speaker 2: that the fences are also down. Those deer are going
Speaker 2: to disappear.
Speaker 1: Up that river, a roof ti up, we just lost
Speaker 1: out of the roof.
Speaker 2: But the pine tree shelter about of the neighbors.
Speaker 1: And the trees are just going over like dominoes dog.
Speaker 1: And we're only at one hundred and six k.
Speaker 2: So if we get up to one fifty's going, oh
Speaker 2: my god, turn the power off.
Speaker 1: That roof's gone.
Speaker 2: That's part of it there, and then the other part
Speaker 2: of it is where over the other side of the road.
Speaker 1: Now we all know that climate change has a huge
Speaker 1: impact on weather patterns. I mean, surely by now everybody
Speaker 1: must know this is that what's at play here? Are
Speaker 1: we still within what's called normal weather patterns.
Speaker 2: Look, climate change doesn't cause extreme weather, just like fertilizer
Speaker 2: doesn't make grass grow. It makes it grow better, makes
Speaker 2: it grow faster and overcome things. But climate change does.
Speaker 2: It makes extreme weather a more extreme, b makes it
Speaker 2: more likely to happen, and c makes it more frequent.
Speaker 2: So climate change in itself isn't the culprit for extreme weather.
Speaker 2: Extreme weather has always happened, as we know, but it
Speaker 2: makes the extremes higher or more extreme, and the frequency
Speaker 2: and the likelihood of them grow with climate change. So
Speaker 2: to your you know, if people are wondering this weather
Speaker 2: event that we're seeing now is that because of climate change. Look,
Speaker 2: I'm not a climate change expert. My guess is that
Speaker 2: it's not because of climate change, but there may be
Speaker 2: some footprints of climate change, maybe because of warmer than
Speaker 2: usual oceans around New Zealand the Tasman. See, if you
Speaker 2: have a warmer ocean, warmer than usual, that puts more water, vapor,
Speaker 2: more energy in the air, and that sort of energy
Speaker 2: can help fuel storm. But it's a complex process. No
Speaker 2: one event is caused by climate change, but as I say,
Speaker 2: it makes these events more frequent, more likely, and more intense.
Speaker 1: So easy to think about the damage in sensational terms.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got trees falling on cars, roofs being
Speaker 1: lifted off buildings, et cetera. But there's also things like
Speaker 1: planes being grounded, power outages. I mean, Nelson Hospital suffered
Speaker 1: a forty five minute power outage yesterday, and forty five
Speaker 1: minutes might not seem like a lot, but when you've
Speaker 1: got people hooked up to machines or breathing for them,
Speaker 1: then it's really serious. What are some of the less
Speaker 1: I suppose sensational but still very costly or dangerous risks
Speaker 1: of severe weather well.
Speaker 2: I think people's mental well being is one of them.
Speaker 2: You know, just think about for those who experienced the
Speaker 2: severe weather events back in early twenty twenty three, when
Speaker 2: we had the Auckland Anniversary flooding, and then we had
Speaker 2: cyclone Gabrielle, and then you know, there are other flooding
Speaker 2: events after that, and you just you start to get
Speaker 2: a bit jumpy. I mean I did, and I produce
Speaker 2: is my living and every time there'd be a heavy downpour,
Speaker 2: it kind of triggers you a little bit, you know.
Speaker 2: So I think people's mental health and is one facet
Speaker 2: of how people can be affected adversely by high impact
Speaker 2: weather events. Obviously, your insurance claims, you know, when you
Speaker 2: have to you know, if your house gets destroyed or
Speaker 2: your roof gets torn off, or you have flooding to
Speaker 2: deal with, you're gonna have to put a claim in
Speaker 2: and you know, odds are your claim's gonna your insurance
Speaker 2: premiums are gonna go up, even you know if the
Speaker 2: claim is sorted, and you know, but it's dealing with
Speaker 2: all the sort of those day to day you know,
Speaker 2: your day to day life. I can only imagine, you know,
Speaker 2: if my roof is blown off, you know, it's one
Speaker 2: thing you got to make dinner and go about doing
Speaker 2: your business day to day. But if you have no roof,
Speaker 2: it just throws a complete spanner in the works. It
Speaker 2: just and that goes back to the mental health component.
Speaker 1: I suppose that weather fatigue.
Speaker 2: Hey yeah, yeah, exactly, great, great term fatigue exactly. So
Speaker 2: I mean it's things like that. It's things like maybe
Speaker 2: you know, if you know, it could be if trucks
Speaker 2: are driving and they're they're pushed over on the roadway.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe that's a delivery that doesn't get somewhere,
Speaker 2: so people's businesses, things have to shut down. So maybe
Speaker 2: there's an impact of the economy. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of sort of I guess, long reaching things that we
Speaker 2: could probably have a pretty long conversation about that it's
Speaker 2: are hard to maybe quantify without you know, that's probably
Speaker 2: kind of a research or a science questions like how
Speaker 2: do you quantify the impacts of a significant weather event
Speaker 2: or a multitude of significant weather events that are in succession,
Speaker 2: you know, how, you know, beside the obvious of you know,
Speaker 2: people's injury and property damage, And I imagine that would
Speaker 2: be long reaching, and that would be kind of from
Speaker 2: a science perspective, kind of fascinating in some ways. I
Speaker 2: would think we're.
Speaker 1: Talking to you on Thursday afternoon, of course, while the
Speaker 1: warnings are still in place. But already there's been a
Speaker 1: tragic death of a man in Willington who was struck
Speaker 1: by a falling branch, and there could be more damage
Speaker 1: and injuries by the time this episode is published.
Speaker 2: But as a.
Speaker 1: Stark reminder, I think of the power of these systems.
Speaker 1: Do we take these things seriously enough?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a tough one because I mean,
Speaker 2: the red warnings are really good, because what's built into
Speaker 2: a red warning is like, oh, this is different. I
Speaker 2: need to behave differently, I need to really think about
Speaker 2: my decisions if I'm on if I'm in that red
Speaker 2: warning area. But when you go to other warnings, potentially
Speaker 2: there is an element of like, well, how does this
Speaker 2: event different from another event that maybe isn't quite so severe.
Speaker 2: I know MET Service, we're working with met Service. Obviously.
Speaker 2: MET Service is becoming part of the Earth Sciences New
Speaker 2: Zealand Fauna where you know GNS and NEILO they were separate.
Speaker 2: Now we're one met Service coming into the fold, which
Speaker 2: is great because we need this as a country in
Speaker 2: order to deal with what mother nature throws our away.
Speaker 2: So this is a really good thing. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that I know met Service is doing and
Speaker 2: they're keenon progressing, is kind of changing the warning system
Speaker 2: and improving the warning system. So hopefully those changes will
Speaker 2: will address some of the things that that what your
Speaker 2: question is about. But I think I think at the
Speaker 2: heart of it and any warning system. This could be
Speaker 2: an Aussie, this could be in America, this could be
Speaker 2: in the UK. Is you hear about a warning and
Speaker 2: then oh, yeah, the weather is bad, but maybe you
Speaker 2: didn't have a big impact. Maybe your house didn't get
Speaker 2: you know, damaged, or maybe your property wasn't damaged by
Speaker 2: falling trees, and so you hear there's another warning coming,
Speaker 2: and you know you're gonna go by memory. Well, heck,
Speaker 2: the last time there was a warning, nothing really happened
Speaker 2: to me. So I don't really you know, I don't
Speaker 2: really need to take any action, or oh yeah, there
Speaker 2: a weather forecasters they get it wrong. You know they're
Speaker 2: gonna say this and it doesn't really happen. And so
Speaker 2: there's a bit of that that's a big social science
Speaker 2: question actually, So this is where social sciences play a
Speaker 2: key role into the development of say, weather warnings, and
Speaker 2: how to communicate them and how to how to basically
Speaker 2: frame them in a lot of ways. So there is
Speaker 2: an element of and hopefully I'm answering your question. I
Speaker 2: realize I'm talking a lot, but maybe not giving you
Speaker 2: a useful answer because it's a hard one to articulate
Speaker 2: and it's just not my specialty in terms of social science,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously, but I think, you know, just from
Speaker 2: being in the business for so long, people kind of like, ah,
Speaker 2: she'll be right att itude. Well maybe she won't be,
Speaker 2: you know, Like this is where I think there can
Speaker 2: be some improvements from a science and weather provider perspective.
Speaker 2: But I also think there can be some improvements with
Speaker 2: people really taking you know, some education where people do
Speaker 2: take the warnings more seriously because they often go by
Speaker 2: what happened before, and just because something happened for it
Speaker 2: and didn't result in a bad impact for you, you know,
Speaker 2: your roof being torn off, your house being flooded or damaged,
Speaker 2: it doesn't guarantee that will happen again. Unfortunately, weather forecasts
Speaker 2: that can only be so precise. So when the weather
Speaker 2: warning is issued, they're usually issued for a large area
Speaker 2: like Canterbury. Canterbury is a huge area, but the impacts
Speaker 2: can be quite variable in Canterbury, you know, unless it's
Speaker 2: something has still worked, like Gabrielle, where there was really
Speaker 2: widespread damage. But even then there were you know, not
Speaker 2: you know, there were landslips in one place is but
Speaker 2: not in the other. Some rivers had really really bad flooding,
Speaker 2: some didn't. So part of it, too, is that warnings
Speaker 2: are issued for broad areas, but there can be variable
Speaker 2: impacts within that warning area. Some could have really really
Speaker 2: high impacts and some areas the impacts would be quite pedestrian.
Speaker 2: If at all this is hid, I'll get here. They're
Speaker 2: gonna be paid for all, guys. WHOA.
Speaker 1: Look, I've heard a lot of people wondering where is spring,
Speaker 1: And I've heard a lot of talk people talk about
Speaker 1: whether the seasons are changing. So at what point do
Speaker 1: you think we scraped with the current season calendar altogether
Speaker 1: and shift everything by a month and call it a day.
Speaker 2: No, I can't do that. Look, seasons are a human construct, right,
Speaker 2: The seasons are changing in the way and we had
Speaker 2: a scientist who since passed on, but doctor Brett Mullen,
Speaker 2: I remember when I first came to at the time NIWA.
Speaker 2: He did a bit of, you know, I guess, a
Speaker 2: bit of an investigation on have has the have the
Speaker 2: seasons changed? And what he did is he looked at
Speaker 2: when the first frost occurred and for select locations around
Speaker 2: the country. And it turned out, and I'm going off
Speaker 2: memory here, hopefully I don't, Butcher his his his findings
Speaker 2: that basically frosts were happening later in autumn. So the
Speaker 2: first frost, you know, it's happening later, deeper into the season,
Speaker 2: and the last frost was happening in springtime was happening earlier.
Speaker 2: So what happens is that the shoulder seasons are getting warmer,
Speaker 2: the shoulder seasons being autumn and spring, right, So what
Speaker 2: we're seeing is that the warmth is lingering longer. So
Speaker 2: when summer ends, we enter autumn, and that warmth is
Speaker 2: lingering a bit longer and longer, and it takes longer
Speaker 2: for that first frost to occur. Also in springtime, we're
Speaker 2: warming up a bit sooner, so the last frost happens
Speaker 2: a bit earlier, so using that as a metric. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the seasons are evolving, but looks people are probably like,
Speaker 2: where a spring? This is spring, man, this is spring. Now,
Speaker 2: I admittedly this is spring kind of next level with
Speaker 2: the high wind and we've seen these damaging wind events.
Speaker 2: We've seen a lot of rain.
Speaker 1: This is spring heating puberty.
Speaker 2: Well said, Yeah, but even even if this spring weren't
Speaker 2: as volatile or as active, and it was maybe a
Speaker 2: notch lower, this would be pretty typical. Acknowledging today and
Speaker 2: Tuesday and other days have not been typical. Just that
Speaker 2: if they were brought down a bit, you know, you
Speaker 2: know that's normal. You know, spring has ups and downs.
Speaker 2: It is the teenager of the seasons.
Speaker 1: Very Moody, thanks for joining us, Chris.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
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 ends a Herald, dot co, dot enz. The Front
Speaker 1: Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who
Speaker 1: also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
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Speaker 1: tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines,