Speaker 1: Yoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. It may
Speaker 2: not have felt like we had much of a summer
Speaker 2: this year, but a cold snap in Auckland has signaled
Speaker 2: that the seasons are changing. Temperatures dropped in our biggest
Speaker 2: city as a cold front passed over much of the
Speaker 2: country last week. It comes as cyclone season continues in
Speaker 2: the Pacific, with Cyclone Alfred last week on Australia's East coast.
Speaker 2: With those hot summer nights fading into memory, today on
Speaker 2: the Front Page, we're looking ahead to what autumn and
Speaker 2: the rest of the year could bring us with NIWA
Speaker 2: meteorologist Chris Brandolino.
Speaker 1: Chris, if we're just cling.
Speaker 2: On to summer for just a few more minutes. Back
Speaker 2: in December, we were told to expect hotter, drier nights
Speaker 2: over the summer. So did the weather perform as expected?
Speaker 1: I would say mixed results certainly, I think areas in
Speaker 1: the North Island. So if I look back at our
Speaker 1: summer outlook, well we call for equal chances for normal
Speaker 1: or above normal rain for the North Island full stop.
Speaker 1: So there's three regions at the east, the north and
Speaker 1: the west of the North Island, and that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So we had dryness for the Upper North Island, dryness
Speaker 1: from the western part of the North Island, so that
Speaker 1: didn't work out great there. We had certainly some cooler
Speaker 1: temperatures in January, but when you look at it as
Speaker 1: a whole, I think February made up for that, and
Speaker 1: in some ways December was exceptionally warm. I think it
Speaker 1: was the fifth warmest December on record, or top five
Speaker 1: warmest December on record from a national perspective, so I
Speaker 1: would yeah, I would describe it as mixed. Look, the
Speaker 1: airflows didn't go as expected. So when we sit down
Speaker 1: and we assembled these long range outlooks for three months,
Speaker 1: we're trying to identify basically themes. You know, what is
Speaker 1: the theme going to be. Just like if you go
Speaker 1: to someone's house for dinner and I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: a dinner party and the theme is Italian, Well, you
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what's on the mail, but you have
Speaker 1: an idea. I'd probably be some pasta, there'd be some sauce,
Speaker 1: maybe some pizza, this, that and the other thing. So
Speaker 1: that's what we're We're not giving you the menu. We're
Speaker 1: giving you these themes. And sometimes those themes look they
Speaker 1: just don't they don't eventuate as expected. We look at guidance,
Speaker 1: and that guidance helps us give insight as to what
Speaker 1: the themes may be. But look, if you go to
Speaker 1: the doctor and you tell the doctor, hey, doc, my
Speaker 1: right arm is killing me. You know, it's just it
Speaker 1: hurts like heck, And okay, let's run some tests through
Speaker 1: some exercises or exams, i should say, and tests and scans,
Speaker 1: and they come back and oh, your right arms fine,
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry. Actually is my left leg that's bothering me.
Speaker 1: So if you get bad intel, you're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: bad results or undesirable results. So we had winds coming
Speaker 1: from the east and southeast. We were expecting more east
Speaker 1: to northeast, and the change in airflow had a consequence
Speaker 1: not only on rainfall patterns, but also temperature pattern So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would in summery, I would describe the summer outlook
Speaker 1: as mixed in terms of how it panned out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw one story last month about Hamilton experiencing an
Speaker 2: unprecedented eleven day streak of hot days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how unusual is that it is pretty unusual what
Speaker 1: happens oftentimes, particularly later in the season. When I say season,
Speaker 1: I'm talking summer season, when when the soils become unusually dry,
Speaker 1: and especially the second half of summer. Let's say that
Speaker 1: does tend to favor hotter temperatures because the sun is
Speaker 1: still obviously strong. But that energy, if the soil is
Speaker 1: unusually dry, the energy is not really going to say
Speaker 1: dry the soil or make it dryer. You know, it's
Speaker 1: going to heat the ground. So there's energy coming from
Speaker 1: the sun. And if there's moist during the ground, particularly
Speaker 1: of any sensible amount of moisture, a meaningful amount, the
Speaker 1: energy or the heat from the sun is going to
Speaker 1: go toward drying the soils. But the soils are already dry,
Speaker 1: you're gonna do a much better job in actually heating
Speaker 1: the soils. So as a consequence, I think that probably
Speaker 1: was a factor. So, yeah, it is unusual, but I think,
Speaker 1: you know, given the dryness that they have experienced in
Speaker 1: the Waikato, particularly in parts of well the western and
Speaker 1: central portion of the North Island, it does kind of
Speaker 1: add up in terms of, you know, expectations of temperature
Speaker 1: when you have really dry conditions, you tend to elevate
Speaker 1: the odds for really warm temperatures, and that's what we
Speaker 1: had in February. Certainly in the Waikata was unusually warm.
Speaker 1: Many days. There were many days where temperatures were in
Speaker 1: the upper twenties, even lower thirties in places like Hamilton.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was certainly a standout for sure.
Speaker 3: Uh. You know, it's interesting timing to go to be
Speaker 3: damned though, on a day where the temperatures are rocketing
Speaker 3: up and a heat wave is actually five days in
Speaker 3: a row above five degrees above the normal temperatures. So
Speaker 3: this is not a heat wave, it's just a burst
Speaker 3: of heat and above normal temperatures. And so whether that
Speaker 3: breaks records or not, you know, we've sometimes gone up
Speaker 3: to thirty degrees in September in this country, So we
Speaker 3: can get a hot northwest thro out of Australia heat off.
Speaker 3: That hot continent comes straight on and goes over the
Speaker 3: mountains and as it does that, as it drops down
Speaker 3: the mountains, that lowering of air pressure means that it
Speaker 3: starts to heat up.
Speaker 2: Well, let's get into autumn. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: the country can say that they have experienced some chilly days,
Speaker 2: especially last week.
Speaker 1: What's behind that'll buy airflow? Basically, you know weather and
Speaker 1: weather forecast and in climate forecast and climbate outlooks. It's
Speaker 1: a challenging business. You've got to have thick skin because, look,
Speaker 1: your predictions aren't always going to come as expected or
Speaker 1: as predicted. But in a lot of ways, these things
Speaker 1: can be simple. And that is airflow. Where is the
Speaker 1: air coming from, And over the past couple of days
Speaker 1: and probably for the next several days, we're going to
Speaker 1: see a propensity for airflows to come from the south.
Speaker 1: That is a cool wind direction. So that is driving
Speaker 1: not only the cool lean where we have experienced the
Speaker 1: past few days and are going to experience until about
Speaker 1: the middle part of the month, but it's also going
Speaker 1: to drive the dry condition autumn. The days are getting shorter,
Speaker 1: so naturally we're going to get cooler with time. But
Speaker 1: certainly early mid March is closer to summer than it
Speaker 1: is winter. I mean, technically it is still as summer
Speaker 1: from an astronomical perspective until I think the twenty eighth
Speaker 1: or twenty first of March when we have the equinox.
Speaker 1: So some people would still say it's summer, but we
Speaker 1: are still expected to have summer like weather, I would think,
Speaker 1: especially in March. So and answer to your question, it's
Speaker 1: southerly airflows we've had and that is likely to be
Speaker 1: a theme probably for the next I would say weakish.
Speaker 1: But as who work away into say the middle part
Speaker 1: of the month, as we get toward the fifteenth, the fourteenth,
Speaker 1: the sixteenth, somewhere in there, we're probably going to see
Speaker 1: more northerly quarter winds, so that could be northeast to
Speaker 1: northwest somewhere in between, and that is a warmer wind direction.
Speaker 1: So I think we'll see a decidedly turn where a
Speaker 1: decided turn to warmer than usual temperature. So if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of summer, you want summer like weather, you
Speaker 1: like going to the beach, you don't want to give
Speaker 1: up summer yet. Hand in there, I think as we
Speaker 1: get to the middle part of the month, into the
Speaker 1: second half of March, quite frankly, that is when we'll
Speaker 1: find those really much warmer temperatures than what we're experiencing now.
Speaker 2: I read in Niewa's weather outlook that overall a mix
Speaker 2: of anti cyclonic flows and easterly quarter flows are expected
Speaker 2: over New Zealand over the autumn season. First off, what
Speaker 2: is an anti cyclonic flow. That's the first time I've
Speaker 2: ever read that in a sentence. So can you break
Speaker 2: that down to us in Layman's steams.
Speaker 1: So, look, when there's cyclonic flows, so cyclonic, think of
Speaker 1: a cyclone. Look, oftentimes when they hear the word cyclone
Speaker 1: in this part of the world, people think of like
Speaker 1: tropical cyclone, like Gabrielle or so the thing tropical cyclone, Well,
Speaker 1: tropical cyclone is just a type of cyclone. There's actually
Speaker 1: various types of cyclone. It just means low pressure. So
Speaker 1: think of cyclone low pressure and low pressure that brings,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, unsettled weather, so cloud cover, rain, snow, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. The opposite of low pressure is high pressure.
Speaker 1: And so instead of calling that a cyclone, we call
Speaker 1: it an anti cyclone. So basically the opposite, so high
Speaker 1: pressure usually brings settled weather. And when I speak to
Speaker 1: younger people, the kind of the trick I give people
Speaker 1: to remember these things is low pressure means lousy weather.
Speaker 1: High pressure means happy weather. They both began with a
Speaker 1: respective letters, So a nice weather. Remember that high pressure
Speaker 1: is an anti cyclone, anti cyclone, it's just its formal name.
Speaker 1: It's kind of technical name. So when we say anti
Speaker 1: cyclonic flows, those are flows that would be associated with
Speaker 1: high pressure or happy weather. Airflow around low pressure is
Speaker 1: like a clock in the southern Hemisphere, it goes clockwise. Okay,
Speaker 1: So think of a clock, so that airflows around that
Speaker 1: low pressure or cyclone like a clockwise Around high pressure
Speaker 1: or an anti cyclone, it flows counterclockwise or anti clockwise,
Speaker 1: so the other way. So when we say anti cyclonic flows,
Speaker 1: that's basically saying, look, high pressure is going to be
Speaker 1: around New Zealand, and the flows that we're expecting are
Speaker 1: going to be flows around or associated with an anti
Speaker 1: cyclone or what's that once again, high pressure happy weather.
Speaker 2: Speaking of tropical cyclones, we're also in that peak zone,
Speaker 2: aren't We Look at Brisbane with Cyclone Alfred, it's the
Speaker 2: first cyclone to make land for there since nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: What are some of the factors that have contributed to
Speaker 2: that event?
Speaker 1: Well, obviously, so the reason this is the peak time
Speaker 1: of year. So when you look at weather history, basically
Speaker 1: late summer through about mid autumn, so think about February
Speaker 1: till about Easter, you know, early mid April somewhere in there.
Speaker 1: That is generally the peak tropical cyclone season, and there's
Speaker 1: a reason for that. The ocean temperatures in the tropics
Speaker 1: are typically after peak. Likewise here in New Zealand late February,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, other weather factors in the atmosphere are more
Speaker 1: favorable for tropical cyclones. So all these things come together
Speaker 1: so that allows for tropical cyclones to form, and this
Speaker 1: is the peak of the tropical cyclone season, so that's
Speaker 1: kind of the background. So this is really not unusual.
Speaker 1: We're in early March, we're kind of smack dab in
Speaker 1: the heart of the kind of the apex of the
Speaker 1: tropical cyclone season when we expect them the form. What's
Speaker 1: happening in this particular case is that we've had a
Speaker 1: tropical cyclone. It's been in the Coral Sea. It's been
Speaker 1: kind of losing intensity gain an intensity based on its environment.
Speaker 1: Tropical cyclones like certain things. They don't like dry air,
Speaker 1: they don't like ocean temperatures below about twenty six twenty
Speaker 1: seven degrees. They actually want warmer ocean temperatures, and they
Speaker 1: like the atmosphere to have a wind profile where there's
Speaker 1: not much change in wind, we call that shear. So
Speaker 1: sheer basically describes the wind changing direction as you travel up,
Speaker 1: say like in a hot air balloon, or if you
Speaker 1: go up in a plane as you're taking off. Now
Speaker 1: it's approaching the coast and it's slowing down, and because
Speaker 1: it is slowing down, that could really enhance the rainfall
Speaker 1: in that area. I've been looking at some of the
Speaker 1: latest computer models and look parts of Brisbane, maybe not
Speaker 1: Brisbane proper, like downtown Brisbane, but say the northern suburbs
Speaker 1: or you know, say the Brisbane metropolitan area, particularly northern suburbs.
Speaker 1: We're talking maybe a half meter to a meter of
Speaker 1: rain over a two or three day period.
Speaker 4: We would wish to outline to Queenslanders the latest on
Speaker 4: the four key challenges of this weather event, waves, wind,
Speaker 4: rainfall and flooding. What's critical for people to understand across
Speaker 4: the large scale that.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with.
Speaker 4: It's a large area and a large population and it's
Speaker 4: important that we update people on what is occurring. You
Speaker 4: will experience at least one of those key four challenges waves, wind,
Speaker 4: rainfall and or flooding, and it's important that Queenslanders prepare
Speaker 4: for that.
Speaker 2: What's the risk of a cyclone or an X cyclone
Speaker 2: as it normally is for us passing near New Zealand
Speaker 2: this year?
Speaker 1: So this year we've pegged it our normal to elevated.
Speaker 1: So when you look at again weather history, we average
Speaker 1: about er point eight of a tropical cyclone. Now obviously
Speaker 1: either it's kind of binary, you get it or you don't,
Speaker 1: but the average, the long term average is right around
Speaker 1: one because at that point we just rounded to one.
Speaker 1: So that tells us that in any given year we
Speaker 1: would expect at least one X tropical cyclone to come
Speaker 1: about five hundred and fifty k's of the North Island
Speaker 1: of New Zealand. So this year we're describing that risk
Speaker 1: as normal to elevate it. And that's largely because of
Speaker 1: things like La Nina, which is what we call a
Speaker 1: climate driver. So people may be wondering what is a
Speaker 1: climate driver, Well, who's at the steering wheel Mother Nature's car?
Speaker 1: Who's actually driving Mother Nature's car? And if you understand
Speaker 1: who's driving the car, you have a much better idea
Speaker 1: in which direction you're going to go. It's not a guarantee,
Speaker 1: but it certainly helps to paint a picture and help
Speaker 1: identify those themes we talked about when we're looking at
Speaker 1: a long range outlook the next couple of months, the
Speaker 1: next three months, et cetera. And so Linina we identified
Speaker 1: as a climate driver. And this goes back to your
Speaker 1: opening question about summer and how it panned out. We
Speaker 1: did have Linina, but it was a kind of an
Speaker 1: odd ball la nina. La nina generally describes the trade
Speaker 1: winds and the tropical oceans of the Pacific Ocean up
Speaker 1: near the dateline and the equator, or those two meet
Speaker 1: going all the way to the Galopicus Islands in South America.
Speaker 1: If you can imagine that the trade ones actually blow
Speaker 1: much stronger, and that's what happens with Lininia. But when
Speaker 1: the trade winds blow really strong, it really affects where
Speaker 1: there's unusually warm ocean temperatures near the equator and unusually
Speaker 1: cool ocean temperatures. And this year we had unusually cool
Speaker 1: ocean temperatures in areas that we typically don't find your
Speaker 1: quintessential classic Lininia, and as a consequence, that meant we
Speaker 1: had different airflows in New Zealand. What happens in the
Speaker 1: tropics actually has flowing effects here in New Zealand, and
Speaker 1: we call that a teleconnection. It's something that happens far
Speaker 1: away but can still influence our local weather. And that
Speaker 1: happens with Linina and it happens with El Nino, and
Speaker 1: those are two opposite phases of what we call enso
Speaker 1: e Nso it just means El Nino Southern oscillation, and
Speaker 1: that's what it is. It's an oscillation between a warm
Speaker 1: face Elmino in a coal phase La Nina. Right.
Speaker 2: So, finally, Chris, if we get out your crystal bowl,
Speaker 2: what about the rest of the year. Do we know
Speaker 2: anything yet about what twenty twenty five may hold for us.
Speaker 1: Here's what I'll say. Let's start with autumn and we'll
Speaker 1: kind of encapsul ate autumn. You have to think of
Speaker 1: weather as Mother Nature's mood, and you think of climate
Speaker 1: as Mother Nature's personality. When we give you these long
Speaker 1: range outlooks, we're attempting to describe Mother Nature's personality over
Speaker 1: the next three months. And there will be days when
Speaker 1: Mother Nature's mood is incongruent with her personality. That is expected,
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, we think you know the flavor will
Speaker 1: be they generally will be aligned. So that said, for
Speaker 1: those that need the rain, and that is areas like Tetanaki,
Speaker 1: areas like the Manawatu, areas like the Waikato, Unfortunately, it's
Speaker 1: going to be very dry for the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: I do think for areas like Tetanaki and Manawatu it
Speaker 1: may be a dry through the autumn season. So if
Speaker 1: there's going to be dryness for the next three months,
Speaker 1: it's likely to be in the western part of both island.
Speaker 1: If there's going to be any wetness this autumn season,
Speaker 1: again as a whole, it'll be likely the eastern part
Speaker 1: of Both island. Now, in terms of temperature, we think
Speaker 1: there's going to be a warm, lean pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1: We feel most confident in areas not named the Eastern
Speaker 1: North Island and not named the Eastern South Island, So
Speaker 1: those two parts of the country, Eastern North and Eastern
Speaker 1: South Island, because the area is likely to come off
Speaker 1: the ocean more times than not. That's an easterly wind.
Speaker 1: We think about normal, average or above average, so somewhere
Speaker 1: in that kind of spectrum of average to above average.
Speaker 1: So what does this mean for you? You're listening to
Speaker 1: this and like, that's great, Chris, you just talked a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: here's what it means. It means that there are days
Speaker 1: where we're likely to be more summer like than usual,
Speaker 1: especially in March, so perhaps days, more days at the beach.
Speaker 1: Who can maybe extend summer a bit longer. It means
Speaker 1: if you're on tank water those dry areas that we
Speaker 1: talked about, or the risk for dry areas, you could
Speaker 1: be calling someone to fill up your tank because mother
Speaker 1: nature is not doing it. If you're farmer, if you
Speaker 1: just or have a large garden, that may be a
Speaker 1: big impact for you for getting irregular or unreliable rainfall.
Speaker 1: So it basically means we could have a little bit
Speaker 1: of an extension of summer as you progress through March
Speaker 1: and April. I think as we get toward April and May,
Speaker 1: we are looking at increasing the odds for getting more rain,
Speaker 1: especially Western South Island. Right now, it's been very dry
Speaker 1: in the Western South Island. That's bad news because their
Speaker 1: hydro catchments are down there. Those hydro catchments, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: they generate a lot of our electricity, so when they
Speaker 1: get really low that can affect electricity prices and the
Speaker 1: overall electricity market. It does look like it's going to
Speaker 1: be quite dry for the next week to ten days,
Speaker 1: but we shouldn't get some meaningful rain in that area
Speaker 1: over the next, say, middle part of the month. But
Speaker 1: as we get toward winter, going even the route, I'll
Speaker 1: say this not a colder than usual winter. The odds
Speaker 1: would probably favor warmer than usual conditions. We're getting quite early.
Speaker 1: This is not our official outlook quite yet, but it
Speaker 1: looks like those airflows, remember I talked about its all
Speaker 1: about airflows. It looks like those airflows may favor the
Speaker 1: east and northeast for the winter season. And if if
Speaker 1: that happens, well, look at east and northeast wind. That
Speaker 1: doesn't get you to Antarctica, does it. You need a
Speaker 1: southerly So if you don't have a lot of southerly winds,
Speaker 1: you just ain't gonna get that cold. Of course, it
Speaker 1: gets cooler because our days get shorter. But in terms
Speaker 1: of what is usual, it looks like it may be
Speaker 1: a warmer than usual winter. We'll see if that happens,
Speaker 1: and it looks like we may start to get better
Speaker 1: chances of raying for the Upper North Island as we
Speaker 1: work away to the end of autumn May and into
Speaker 1: winter June, July, and August. We'll hope so because it's
Speaker 1: been very dry for the Upper North Island. And then
Speaker 1: after that, boy, you want to talk about spring and
Speaker 1: maybe next summer. We're watching for a potential second Linina.
Speaker 1: So Lininia right now is waning, and which is typical.
Speaker 1: We expect Lonina to come to lose it giddy up
Speaker 1: as you work away into the autumn season down in
Speaker 1: the Southern Hemisphere. No La Nina or for that matter,
Speaker 1: El Nino's average. They all have their own personality and
Speaker 1: their own footprint.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Chris. That's it for this episode
Speaker 2: of The Front Page. You can read more about today's
Speaker 2: stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot co dot nz.
Speaker 2: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin,
Speaker 2: who is also a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe
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Speaker 2: the headlines.