How long will spring’s wild winds keep roaring across the country?

efforts in several parts of the country. So is this usual for this time of year? And how long will we have to wait for some sunny days ahead? Today on the Front Page, Newer Principal scientist Chris Brandolino is with us to take us through what's causing this stormy weather and whether there is in fact a lot at the end of the tunnel. First off, Chris tell us why this is happening, what's causing these high winds across the country.

of the hill, you'll go maybe not as fast. If that hill is more gentle or not as steep, that elevation change isn't as dramatic. Think of high pressure in the atmosphere, like the top of the hill. High pressure brings nice weather. And for those listening or watching from the upper North Island, Auckland and Hamilton and toward Northland, we had some beautiful weather on Sunday, going back to the weekend, even better weather on Monday, not so bad

on Tuesday. That was because of high pressure. Now that's one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, low pressure is like a hole in the atmosphere and Mother Nature is trying to fill that hole with the fluid called air. And so when you have high pressure top of the hill, low pressure kind of bottom of the hill, or a hole a valley. If they're quite distinct in terms of one being high, one being quite lower deep, then your elevation change or your

pressure gradient could be quite dramatic. And that is what causes wind, is pressure gradient, the change in air pressure over distance. If you think of it like a mountain in a hill, if that makes sense.

You know, you're trying to wrap your head around this, and that is what can cause you know, these bursts of wind which are wing gusts to three second bursts of win That is what generally causes a lot of the damage. And we've seen that play out. We've seen

wing gusts. I was just looking Invercargo. I had a win gus to think of one hundred I'm looking off screen here one hundred and thirty seven k and over toward Gore a wing gust of one hundred and twenty four k I believe, one hundred Yeah, and at Wellington at the airport one hundred and twenty six and Cayle Cow and Wellington Kyalkou the mountain there one hundred and fifty five kilometers per hour. So that type of wing gust.

If you can't wrap your head around, just go to social media and you see like the pine trees leaning down, and like a whole row of pine trees over toward Hamner Forest leaning down on power lines, you know, or roofs being lifted, you know, obviously the trampolines and you know any deck furniture things like that that'll be you know, that could be k's down the road or you know, half k hundreds of meters anyway, Yeah, is.

But this is like, this is next level, and what's driving that is kind of nerdy. We've had a lot of low pressure that whole in the atmosphere I've talked about, right, we had a over the subn Ocean, so the Suthern Ocean is that big body of water separating New Zealand and Antarctica, you know, down to the ice and we've had low pressure just favoring and continuously moving through the Southern Ocean, brushing against the South Island at times, and that has been a big reason for our wind, our

strong westerly wind. Why is that low pressure in the Southern Ocean? Why is it there a lot? Well, believed it or not, We can trace that back to Antarctica of all places. So at the very top of the atmosphere, like way at the very top over the South Pole back in September, the temperatures got really warm, really fast, at least for that part of the atmosphere. And when that happened, kind of jumping to the chase, if you will.

What that did is that that kind of displaced all that low pressure that typically favors the Antarctic region, what

we call the polar vortex. It basically allowed for that low pressure to be displaced into the Southern Ocean, and because of that, we now have these strong westerly winds, big hole in the atmosphere, if you will, over the southern ocean, kind of a decent sized mountain near northern New Zealand, and that those two features are creating that pressure gradient, that change in pressure or as we said before, that change in elevation. And this is why we've seen

these persistent episodes of high wind. We saw them earlier in their week, we see we're seeing them now and guess what, we're probably gonna see it again next week

on Labor Day. So just the heads up for those getting a headstart on the unofficial start to the I guess summer season, be mindful that Monday of next week things are still you know, crystallizing, but there will be another low coming from the west and north, and that will probably bring with it another round of active weather, probably not to the degree we're seeing today, but still could be quite impactful because it's a big travel day and people will be you know, enjoying the public holiday.

So that is something we could see again. And we could see some really cold temperatures, unusually cold temperatures behind that on Tuesday, which could impact farmers and livestock because we'renowned to the growing season. So because of these big swings, like right now in kai Kota, it got to more than thirty degrees today, thirty degrees but yeah, and then we're talking about much cooler temperatures tomorrow. Then we're talking about temperatures going up on Sunday and Monday, Labor Day,

then going back down on Tuesday. Those big temperature changes, they are congruent with wind. Whenever you have these big temperature changes, oftentimes a reflection of those temperature changes up and down that roller coaster is strong wind. So what we're seeing play out high wind, active weather, big temperature changes, they're all kind of connected.

sudden stratospheric warming event. We just call it SSW. So use an SSW drop that in your dinner time conversation. You'll raise some eyebrows. That SSW that tends to have lingering effects weeks several weeks after. So it looks like this sort of pattern where we have active weather, strong westerlies, things like that, up and down with temperature. It's probably going to continue through at least the rest of October.

So we got another week or so, and if you look at the long range guidance, it actually may go into the first ten days of November, so we may have to wait until the middle second week, third week of November. Once that happens, it will happen eventually. It's a matter of being delayed but not denied. But when it does happen, the expectation as will have settled weather kick in over the country, high pressure and we should

see a change in the rainfall patterns. So for the past couple months, since the beginning of spring, it's the west of the South Island that's been getting hammered with a lot of rain, mountains, snow, high wind. That's probably gonna and we have dry weather for the eastern part of the islands, especially up toward Hawk's Bay where they have some pretty dry conditions. Once we see that pattern shift, our winds are going to shift. And when our wind shift,

so does the rainfall pattern. So as we work our way into the second half of November and into summer proper December, January, and February, odds are we should see the areas that have been wet Western and lower South Island they should become drier, and areas that have been dry Hawk's Bay, Eastern Northland, their odds for rainfall should start going up. It may take another two three four weeks. That happened.

and the likelihood of them grow with climate change. So to your you know, if people are wondering this weather event that we're seeing now is that because of climate change. Look, I'm not a climate change expert. My guess is that it's not because of climate change, but there may be some footprints of climate change, maybe because of warmer than

usual oceans around New Zealand the Tasman. See, if you have a warmer ocean, warmer than usual, that puts more water, vapor, more energy in the air, and that sort of energy can help fuel storm. But it's a complex process. No one event is caused by climate change, but as I say, it makes these events more frequent, more likely, and more intense.

then it's really serious. What are some of the less I suppose sensational but still very costly or dangerous risks of severe weather well.

So I think people's mental health and is one facet of how people can be affected adversely by high impact

weather events. Obviously, your insurance claims, you know, when you have to you know, if your house gets destroyed or your roof gets torn off, or you have flooding to deal with, you're gonna have to put a claim in and you know, odds are your claim's gonna your insurance premiums are gonna go up, even you know if the claim is sorted, and you know, but it's dealing with all the sort of those day to day you know,

your day to day life. I can only imagine, you know, if my roof is blown off, you know, it's one thing you got to make dinner and go about doing your business day to day. But if you have no roof, it just throws a complete spanner in the works. It just and that goes back to the mental health component.

there's an impact of the economy. So there's a lot of sort of I guess, long reaching things that we could probably have a pretty long conversation about that it's are hard to maybe quantify without you know, that's probably kind of a research or a science questions like how do you quantify the impacts of a significant weather event or a multitude of significant weather events that are in succession, you know, how, you know, beside the obvious of you know,

people's injury and property damage, And I imagine that would be long reaching, and that would be kind of from a science perspective, kind of fascinating in some ways. I would think we're.

MET Service is becoming part of the Earth Sciences New Zealand Fauna where you know GNS and NEILO they were separate. Now we're one met Service coming into the fold, which is great because we need this as a country in order to deal with what mother nature throws our away. So this is a really good thing. And one of the things that I know met Service is doing and they're keenon progressing, is kind of changing the warning system

and improving the warning system. So hopefully those changes will will address some of the things that that what your question is about. But I think I think at the heart of it and any warning system. This could be an Aussie, this could be in America, this could be in the UK. Is you hear about a warning and then oh, yeah, the weather is bad, but maybe you

didn't have a big impact. Maybe your house didn't get you know, damaged, or maybe your property wasn't damaged by falling trees, and so you hear there's another warning coming, and you know you're gonna go by memory. Well, heck, the last time there was a warning, nothing really happened to me. So I don't really you know, I don't really need to take any action, or oh yeah, there a weather forecasters they get it wrong. You know they're

gonna say this and it doesn't really happen. And so there's a bit of that that's a big social science question actually, So this is where social sciences play a key role into the development of say, weather warnings, and how to communicate them and how to how to basically frame them in a lot of ways. So there is

an element of and hopefully I'm answering your question. I realize I'm talking a lot, but maybe not giving you a useful answer because it's a hard one to articulate and it's just not my specialty in terms of social science, you know, obviously, but I think, you know, just from being in the business for so long, people kind of like, ah,

she'll be right att itude. Well maybe she won't be, you know, Like this is where I think there can be some improvements from a science and weather provider perspective.

But I also think there can be some improvements with people really taking you know, some education where people do take the warnings more seriously because they often go by what happened before, and just because something happened for it and didn't result in a bad impact for you, you know, your roof being torn off, your house being flooded or damaged, it doesn't guarantee that will happen again. Unfortunately, weather forecasts

that can only be so precise. So when the weather warning is issued, they're usually issued for a large area like Canterbury. Canterbury is a huge area, but the impacts can be quite variable in Canterbury, you know, unless it's something has still worked, like Gabrielle, where there was really widespread damage. But even then there were you know, not you know, there were landslips in one place is but not in the other. Some rivers had really really bad flooding,

some didn't. So part of it, too, is that warnings are issued for broad areas, but there can be variable impacts within that warning area. Some could have really really high impacts and some areas the impacts would be quite pedestrian. If at all this is hid, I'll get here. They're gonna be paid for all, guys. WHOA.

the country. And it turned out, and I'm going off memory here, hopefully I don't, Butcher his his his findings that basically frosts were happening later in autumn. So the first frost, you know, it's happening later, deeper into the season, and the last frost was happening in springtime was happening earlier. So what happens is that the shoulder seasons are getting warmer, the shoulder seasons being autumn and spring, right, So what

we're seeing is that the warmth is lingering longer. So when summer ends, we enter autumn, and that warmth is lingering a bit longer and longer, and it takes longer for that first frost to occur. Also in springtime, we're warming up a bit sooner, so the last frost happens a bit earlier, so using that as a metric. Yeah, the seasons are evolving, but looks people are probably like,

where a spring? This is spring, man, this is spring. Now, I admittedly this is spring kind of next level with the high wind and we've seen these damaging wind events. We've seen a lot of rain.