There isn’t a lot of interesting weather going on today, it is nice and sunny for some and that can be interesting enough, actually quite warm here in Canterbury which I’m enjoying. As has been mentioned through the WeatherWatch.co.nz facebook page we can see that different aspects of weather affect certain people differently. Some like it sunny all the time, some like it when it rains, some like thunderstorms, there’s probably some who like it foggy, sounds unlikely but they must be out there. Actually photographers on a misty foggy morning taking a photo of silhouetted trees through the fog, yes there is weather for everyone it seems.

Thought I would go through one of my favourite types of weather while we are in a lull of non interesting weather today, thunderstorms of course. A chase I did with a friend Stephen Burrows back on the 5th January 2006. I still remember it very well.

I finished work that day and Steve and I headed south to Ashburton, we drove inland a little and waited around while looking about at the sky. Nice big clouds were going up but nothing had really triggered, a trip to KFC in Ashburton was in order to get a twister combo each. Makes sense when chasing thunderstorms and this combination has proven to work well in the past. We then drove down to the Ashburton River mouth, we knew something could happen but we just had to wait. We waited till 9.40pm there then all of a sudden an easterly wind really started to pick up near the coast and a cloud inland started to grow.

We headed off after this thing and not long after lightning was shooting out of this cloud and we followed this storm for around an hour from memory. It might not have been as severe as the thunderstorm that moved over Christchurch on the 4th September earlier this month but the lightning photo’s I got from it are some of my best.

Here’s a video below that I made for this chase, exciting stuff! Enjoy.

By weather analyst Aaron Wilkinson, WeatherWatch.co.nz

Caution – raw footage, contains some swearing