On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 03:57:21 +1300, Joe wrote:


"Succorso" wrote in message
...
Just browsing some met data and noticed the metar from Sydney Airport
yesterday at 3pm was reporting a temperature of 28c and a dewpoint of
-8c! That's pretty dry...

--
Chris
www.ivy-house.net




Also it appears to be 26c in Christchurch, NZ at 3am, with the peak not
happening until evening. How unusual is this?

Hi Joe,

It may be a record for a high overnight temperature in Christchurch. I had
a look at my records from my weather station about 10km south of the
airport where the official obs are taken for high temps between midnight
and 6am and were greater then +23C.My Records onl go back to Jan 2000.

I found the following

28 Dec 2000 at midnight, 23.1 with a northerly wind
15 Feb 2001 at 1am, 25.5 after a high of 32.5 with a nor'wester the previous day
27 March 2001 at 2:05am, 24.4 with a nor'west wind.
14 Dec 2003 at midnight, 23.2 with a northerly wind
9 Jan 2004 at 2:00am 26.2 with a northerly wind

Looking at the maximum daily averages for each year
23 Jan 2000 22.3
14 Feb 2001 20.6
6 Dec 2002 22.7
31 Jan 2003 23.0
9 Jan 2004 24.4

As you can see I recorded 26.2 at 2am on Jan 6th. There was a nor'west
wind blowing at the time and this is a 'fohn' wind.
This wind strengthened further north in the morning blowing over 4 or
so power pylons that are designed to withstand 160km/h winds.
There is speculation that winds must have
exceeded 200km/h to blow the pylons to the ground.

One person was killed when the tent she was in was picked up by the wind
and carried 60 metres crashing in to the side of a house.
Thankfully Christchurch was spared the worst of the wind.
I recorded a 50km/h gust.

There is a story at the following link with a photo of the fallen pylons.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepres...2a6009,00.html

Been another warm and dry day here with a high of 32.4C and dew points of
0.6C (14% humidity) at 16:00 NZDT. I recorded 2mm of rain in December and
1.6mm so far this month. The fire risk in the region is extreme and fire
crews have been bought in from around the country to back up crews here.

On New Years day an AWS in Darfield recorded 41C but this was later
reduced to 38.4.
To quote NIWA: "The significance of this figure is that this is one
of the few occasions when temperatures in New Zealand have exceeded
the 100°F mark (37.8°C) since reliable climate recordings began in the
1860s. The hottest day on record is 7 February 1973, when 42.4°C
was recorded at Rangiora, 42.3°C at Jordon in the Awatere Valley,
with 41.6°C in Christchurch City and 40.0°C at Christchurch Airport."

The link for the full story is
http://www.niwa.cri.nz/pubs/mr/archive/2004-01-03-1

Sorry for the rather long post but there are a few unusal thins going on
with the weather over here.

Cheers

Jeff

--
Jeff Northcott
Christchurch, New Zealand
Contact me through: http://weather.northcott.co.nz/misc/contact.php
Home Weather Station: http://weather.northcott.co.nz/