With the media being focused (hyped) on the flooding drama another weather event has gone unnoticed.
Yesterday 4th July Hamilton either nearly or did experience its hottest July day on record with some parts of the city reaching 21c. I remember a few years ago when New York reached a record of 18c on a mid-winter day. it made headline news all around the world with a large photo of New Yorkers on the streets in short sleeves.

1. If tornadoes are meant to be rare in NZ then why we are getting so many of these recently (in fact I have heard in the news at least once for almost every low recently). Also if a tornado is touching down anywhere in NZ, does it mean a ‘supercell’ storm has formed as it does in the USA?

2. It hasn’t been too cold recently. When can I next expect some very cold and wintry burst of weather?

3. What does temperature for each hour in the trends graph show, average, lowest or the exact temperature for that particular time e.g. 1:00pm? Same goes for the outlooks and 9-day forecasts.

Having reviewed Observations in my area for a few weeks now I am either in the middle of a lot of turbulence or some people do not know how to accurately report their observed wind directions. Do you have any process on how you choose which are authentic or just average out for your reporting? Is it worth your contacting all the observers on your contributing database and explaining that the wind direction stated is the direction it is coming from – not going to. i.e. A southerly wind is a wind that originates from the south and blows towards the north. In other words, it’s a wind coming from the south.

Can you explain why the rain radar maps that the Met Service provide have such a bizarre colour scheme? It makes them very hard to read, and as a geographer it breaks my heart to see a system that has no logical progression from low to high in it. Other countries seem to use much more intuitive spectral scales.