Hi Chris, within 24 hours the forecasts do update hourly and reflect that – this is capturing nearby rain events and trying to more accurately place them. If Niwa and MetService had open weather data in NZ then all forecasters would ingest that tax funded weather data into the forecasts (as we do in Australia, UK, USA, Canada, Japan etc) to make them even more consistent. What you’re seeing is the forecasts try to lock in something that is developing (in this case, a large area of low pressure is about to cross NZ with 360 degree wind shifts in some regions and rain, thunderstorms/instability. If you monitor the weather graphs at RuralWeather.co.nz you may find it more consistent and it’s more visual.

Hope that helps,
Cheers
WW

Hi there, the SST was over Antarctica and I don’t believe is the driver behind sea temperatures and air temperatures in northern NZ being warmer than usual at the moment – as that link talks about it is due to La Nina, which has formed in the central Pacific Ocean at the equator, but affects airflows into northern NZ and helps lift sea temperatures in the western Pacific. The SST may actually be contributing to the opposite – the polar blasts consistently hitting South-East Australia and brushing the very south of the South Island from time to time. There isn’t much data on SSTs and because Niwa/Earth Sciences NZ chooses to commercially compete with us rather then be a public science agency we can’t access NZ’s public/Government data in this area to share with you to make more sense of it.

One thing to note is that the more unsettled the Southern Ocean weather pattern is (due to the SST) the more likely NZ will have bursts of warmer than usual weather and colder than usual weather (spring like) as the polar vortex is very wavy at the moment (the blue polar line in our weather videos).

Hope that helps 🙂
– Phil D

Hi Stewart – they need open data. Basically that means MetService and Niwa don’t get to commercially control publicly/tax funded data (like observations and radar). Open data is how it’s done in all other modern nations, but in NZ we tax fund data so commercial Government agencies can control any competition and limit it – and as a result NZ has less accurate weather forecasts than in Australia where open data is standard. This is done by design to keep Niwa and MetService commercially relevant rather than looking at what is best for NZ Inc.

Sadly this won’t likely change in NZ as the political process is severely corrupted (by that we mean the discussions within Government about public weather data use are private and decided by unelected officials, and often involve the actual CEO’s of MetService and Niwa – who personally profit from holding this data back from the public).
Phil D