It has been just 2.5 months since the carbon Emissions Trading Scheme kicked in for New Zealand. I’m sure if they give it a little more time, spring snows like this one will be “a thing of the past“.
WRECKED: The Wrens building in Yarrow St, Invercargill, shortly after the roof collapsed because of heavy snow
City store in ruins after roof collapses | Stuff.co.nz
A central Invercargill street was cordoned off yesterday after the roof of decorating business Wrens collapsed under the weight of heavy snow.
The building was one of at least four that caved in following significant snow on Saturday and yesterday.
But wait, there’s more:
City snowfall biggest in 50 years? | Stuff.co.nz
A Southland weather expert says the weekend’s snowfall could be the heaviest in Invercargill for 50 years.
‘Winter in spring disaster’ | Stuff.co.nz
Southern farmers will need to wait for snow to clear to assess their losses from the impact of the southerly storm that hit during the middle of lambing.
Federated Farmers board member David Rose, who farms at Oporo near Wallacetown, said while much of the snow had melted yesterday, the night before had been shocking, with blizzard conditions.
“Winter in winter is OK but winter in spring is a bit of a disaster.”
Heavy snow destroys $100k glasshouse in city | Stuff.co.nz
Heavy snow destroyed his $100,000 glasshouse at the weekend at Eldon Gardens, with the panes and shards of glass smashing down on to about 2000 young tomato plants.
Thanks to Tom Nelson for gathering links.
Sadly it appears the green loons have taken over my hone country. Thank god I live in the UK where something like this (not the law and weather) could never happen.
Oh wait…..
The model was wrong-again.
It’s called Global Climate Disruption!
So the Prophecy of climate of mass Disruption was true…
Boring Prophet: “There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight O’clock.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/quotes
Much more than this, the main indoor sports arena in Invercargill has also collapsed under the weight of snow.
Stadium Southland, only ten years old and a major arena providing a home for all high level indoor sport, has totally collapsed and is now being demolished. The stadium had a flat roof and could not withstand the extraordinary snowfall. We are now three weeks into Spring and while a snowfall of some sort can happen occasionally, the volume dropped on Invercargill was truly exceptional. More is on the way for the rest of the week.
Similarly, a major supermarket has also collapsed.
In the North Island thousands of homes are without power as very high winds have brought down electricity lines, while many places face significant flooding.
Given the events of the past couple of years, this finding is hardly surprising – Kiwis are less and less concerned about climate change and not very convinced that we should ‘lead the world’ in ‘combating’ it.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/survey-concern-wanes-over-climate-change-3787489
I read somewhere that the reason the stadium collapsed was because it was wet snow, due to the area being so far north, and that it was heavier than normal snow. So with global warming the snow will become wetter and heavier and we can look forward to more stadium collapses…
Yes, the ETS laws will fix it all right. They’ll make it too expensive for people to heat their homes so some will die of hypothermia. Just think how many less useless consumers there’ll be. Its working just as intended.
As for the “compassionate” Greens, human welfare is the very last thing on their minds – except their own, of course.
Oh yeah?, some “global warming” for the kiwi’s.
Heavy and unusual snowfall is a clear indicator of Global Warming … sorry, that should be Distruptive Climate Change (or is the word “climate” banned now?). Anyway, the science says (so I’m told by impeccable authorities) that warming heats water that turns into steam that floats across to NZ and then freeezes of course on account of their nearness to the Antarctic and then falls as snow.
Warming –> Steam –> Antarctic –> Snow. Simples!
Also I’m told that there was a very warm summer in Russia followed by a heavy snowfall NZ. The correlation (with a lag of only a couple of months) is clear. And this correlation proves that the one caused the other – and obviously the one that came first, scientifically speaking, is what the scientists call the “causative factor”. Or so I read in the papers, anyway.
It’s good to see ETS works. The Kiwi version solved AGW in ten weeks flat…
So the ETS law obviously works, then. Just sign up, and it gets colder….
Its similar to Denis Howell being appointed ‘drought minister’, and creating rain inside three days.
Anthony, this snow storm is part of a large weather system “the size of Australia” that hit New Zealand a few days ago. It has brought strong winds and heavy rain to the North Island, and snow to the south of the South Island. Here in Christchurch we are unaffected, nice sunny spring weather (cherry blossom), with some wind, but nothing out of the ordinary.
You might be able to find some satellite pictures of the large weather system – it’s remarkable for its size, rather than its intensity.
All the best.
Seems a rather mixed report:
” The ingredients for such a heavy snowfall appeared two to three times a year but it was only once in about 15 years that it all combined perfectly for a big dump, Mr Fraser said.
The weather was very unsettled and the cold showers would continue well into this week.
It was not exceptional to have snowfall in Invercargill or to have it in spring.
Mr Fraser said cold winds from Antarctica and a deep low to the southeast of Campbell Island, in exactly the right place, helped to drag cold air up.
“It’s not a heavy fall for inland South Island standards … we are prone to getting the odd snowfall down here.”
OK, that might not have been Global Grumpy Climate Irritability Disorder, or whatever it is called now, but the earthquake DEFINITELY was!
Yep – the ETS is already working, we now get snow in spring. I remember in 1986, snow fell on 22-23 December in Queentown mountains, 2/3rds the way down on the Remarkables.
Like British Rail, it was the wrong type of snow that caused the damage.
However, in all honesty been a mild winter in Auckland, but very wet.
Anyway, looks like the Greens will get Climate taxes imposed in Australia soon as well, so we can have a laugh at them as well.
Remember it’s Global Climate Disruption now. So any weather event can be attributed to something I do.. and I can be fed an eco-guilt trip so as to open up my wallet.
Wake up world..!!
Yep….that’s what is to be expected with global warming…er…global climate disruption 🙂
I don’t suppose that our Michael Fish is on holiday in NZ is he?
Of interest is that the likelihood of spring snow was predicted a month earlier
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4034277/Polar-blast-lines-up-for-spring
The advancement of the polar front jet and its storm track can be seen here
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_sohem_00.gif
The debate is if the decreased antarctic vortex (and associated ozone hole) is responsible for (increase) decrease in annular movement of the stormtrack.
As a New Zealander, I along with many others have been mightily proud of the fact that one of our major cities (Christchurch) has just suffered a major earthquake (magnitude 7.1) with ZERO loss of life – damn we build our buildings strong.
Now we have a 10 year old building falling down due to a once in 15 year snowfall!
Facepalm!
Gore effect! Also happened here in Portugal last week. Late Wednesday, the Drought section of the national Meteorological Service issued there first drought report this year. This happened because it rained so much since it was created last November. Now, they said that the most rainiest part of Portugal was beginning a drought period. Less than two days later, Mother Nature dumped a major rainfall in that supposed drought region. Irony: the meteorological institute didn’t detect rain that day, probably due to lack of electrical energy in the area. More at http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2010/09/chuva-na-seca.html (in Portuguese)
Ecotretas
Jimmy Haigh at 1:50 am, thanks Jimmy, very droll.
Purakanui
sorry to say that you are quoting the Govt. advisers if you think that spring down-under started three weeks ago. The first day of spring in New Zealand will be on September 23rd, when the sun crosses the equator heading south (first day of autumn in the N.Hemisphere too).
The fact that it is still winter doesn’t lessen the blow for all of those affected in the deep south. We have been hammered here in the North Island by days of westerly gales on the northern fringe of this huge system, centred between New Zealand and Antarctica.
Paul Deacon
I am happy that you folks in Canterbury are being spared the full force of this storm. On top of the earthquake you copped 16 days ago it would not have been nice at all. It was all a matter of timing, because we know that if that same southerly front had moved up the coast instead of inland, it could have been Christchurch headlining once again! If it wasn’t for the Southern Alps the east coast would be getting what us west coasters (North & South) are getting bashed with.
It would be interesting to find out what consideration was placed by the architects on the possibility of heavy, wet snow in the design of the many large, flat rooves that sucummed this weekend? I sure hope that predictions of milder weather in the future weren’t a deciding factor!
In comparison to last winter it has been generally milder in my part of the North Island (lower west coast). Mountain snowfalls arrived later than usual but have been consistent without being over heavy, and the number of falls are now putting 2010 into the top four years of the past 3 decades. Frost numbers have been above average although we haven’t had one since the rain really started settling in 6 weeks ago. We are now experiencing one of our wettest winters since the mid 90’s, nearly 300mm (12 inches) in the past 7 weeks.
La Nina is on the way. It usually means good times for us here on the west coast. Hurry up and come on down girl. We’ve had enough of your brother!
Sounds like construction regs need to be updated so that buildings can withstand heavy snow on their roofs. Japan is doing pretty well against earthquakes; NZ should be able to manage a bit of snow! 😉
The IPGCD (Intergovernmental Panel on Global Climate Disruption) will soon sort this lot out. Then the climate will never change, ever again.
NZ government using global warming taxes to help out farmers hit by the cold…
Why am I reminded of all those journalists at Copenhagen waiting in the freezing cold for half a day to listen to speeches about global warming?
Tis only weatherI suppose … until the summer anyway.
Strange that there is so little news of the cold weather on our TV nor in the press. There was plenty about the earthquake as there should be. Then there was bugger all about the cold winter in South America. I suppose cold doesn’t cut it like warm does when you want to promote a disaster.
Now what if CO2 when it exceeds 380 has such negative feedback that it can TIP the world into a deep freeze. I’m sure some of the warmers at the CSIRO will be working on that. BoM will have to adjust and homogenise to show unprecedented cooling. Mann will find some more pines and Keith can go back to Yamal. A brand new gravy train. Al will have a film about Polar Bears starving cause they are snowed in.
Jimmy Haigh says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:50 am
So far north of where? The Antarctic perhaps. Due to its maritime climate any snow in Invercargil is an unusual event let alone during spring. Interestingly 6 months ago our Lunar Weather Man Ken Ring predicted wild stormy and unusually cold weather in NZ between now and into our summer. Could be wrong but don’t recall the NZ Met Service with all their hi-tech computer climate models making any such weather predictions. However a couple of days ago they did manage to predict that we would be hit by one of the largest storm systems ever recorded. Perhaps they got that bit right.
With reference to the tomato plants, see what happens when climate reality meets the greenhouse effect?
The forecast for tomorrow, more climate disruption on the Southland.
To the owners of the building: It’s yer own dang fault! What were you thinking about when you painted the building black? Don’t you know anything about albedo? Well, mother earth sure does. And for your callous insistence on contributing to Global Climate Disruption (can we start calling it GCD yet?), she’s payin’ you back. Haven’t you been listening to his lordship Steven Chu? Serves you right. If only you had painted the building white, you would have been OK. Remember that next time! /sarc off
No better way to cool the heels of a hysterical AGWer (GCDer?) than a bit of snow.
@Ian Cooper at 3:53am
Strangely, not all counties recognise their seasons in the same way as the US and UK which I believe use the solstices and equinoxes to define a season change. Australia, NZ and South Africa all use the first day of September to denote Spring. December 1 defines Summer etc.
So when the media, government or the normal citizens of these countries say that something happens in Spring they mean the period between 1 September and 30 November. Clearly all comparisons of weather phenomena also use these dates.
Some Asian countries define spring as a 3 month period with the vernal equinox as the middle day. As with so many things … it all depends on the culture.
IMHO the SI of NZ (in ETS land) experienced an inverted GCD event at 10:30 NZST that surprised the NZMS and the IPCC. A commentator in ESP said GCD events could be eliminated PDQ by enforcing TLMs (Three Letter Mnemonics) on all NGOs. Accordingly, it is suggested that this blog is re-titled WWT (Watts With That) to reduce AGW (Alphabetic Growth of Words).
PS
Does anybody know the whereabouts of Glenis Mavis McQueen originally from Invercargill who travelled around South America in the Aardvark bus many years ago?
Would have been slippery roads for Burt Munro…(World’s fastest Indian [MC])…
Can you make decent paint from RINOs?
So now that their hoax has spectacular exploded, we move to Global Climate Change Disruption hoax. Seems a whole lot like what the NAZIs were doing with their perfect man.
They will end as the people of Eastern Island building up Moais to remember their master’s image watching over the rising waters of the pacific seas.
Green nut-seeseem!
Actually, it’s international. GISS & UAH follow this convention too. According to meteorologists & climatologists worldwide, “Meteorological spring” begins on Sept. 1, “Meteorological winter” begins on Dec. 1, etc. This way the coldest three months are in the “winter” and the warmest three months are in the “summer.”
Extra rain could result from global warming. Or maybe extra drought. And dandruff. And hangnails. Extra snow? Hahahahahaha! Nice try, though.
So what else is new? Last February I had to go up on my roof in -29 degrees centigrade and start shoveling because the roof beams were creaking. Several roofs in the neighborhood did collapse.
This happened in southern Sweden during the “warmest year ever”. And Sweden has building codes that are supposed to make this sort of thing impossible.
Moon at maximum South declinational culmination, on the 15th peak of severe/extreme weather expected for next three days, would be the default forecast.
So what was so unexpected? With the conjunction of Jupiter Uranus Earth this upcoming week, extra special double plus good energy content is to be expected as usual.
Both of the outer planets are South of the ecliptic plane, adding energy balance to the southern hemisphere, as it will be in the higher ion content of the solar wind currents as they pass by.
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=399&vbody=10&month=9&day=20&year=2010&hour=12&minute=00&fovmul=1&rfov=5&bfov=30&porbs=1&brite=1&showsc=1
http://sdowww.lmsal.com/sdomedia/SunInTime/2010/09/20/f_HMImag_171.jpg
Sourcing or Responding?
Huth says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:11 am
Sounds like construction regs need to be updated so that buildings can withstand heavy snow on their roofs. Japan is doing pretty well against earthquakes;
Of course! Their buildings are designed to withstand attacks from giant monsters and robots – what more could you expect?
Snow on the hills around Dunedin and more forecast.
The last time we had so much snow so late was in the early 1980s. October 1 is the opening of the fishing season and I couldn’t get to my favourite spot because of deep drifts. It snowed briefly on Christmas Day in 1975.
From memory, the Met Service forecast a milder than usual Spring this year.
psilent (6.17a.m.) and Roger Knights (10.04a.m.)
I am aware that there is such a thing as the “Meterorological Seasons,” that conveniently start at the expedient begining of the aforementioned months. As has been pointed out, politicians have taken to making this convenience official (expediency is their middle name after all), on the advice of meteorologists. No offence to Anthony and all other meteorologists, but it is not their job to tell us when the seasons start or end. Their job is to predict how the seasons may go, and report back on how they went.
The fact that we have seasons is nothing to do with weather, or climate, and everything to do with astronomical factors. Since time was first measured (by an astronomer of course) it has been the job of astronomers to tell the authorities when the seasons begin. Perhaps with so many bigger fish to fry these days the astronomers have dropped the ball and some of the latter day scientists have picked up the job in stead? The fact that our calendar is out of whack with the seasons is just too hard a sell for some so a compromise was deemed necessary. Although for the life of me I can’t think why anyone in New Zealand would consider December a summer month ahead of March!
Purakanui
I remember that Christmas snowfall in 1975. It was visible the next day on Wharite Peak near the Manawatu Gorge. Muldoon had just come to power the month before and as far as we were concerned it was ALL his fault!
Cheers
Coops
New Zealanders you have my sympathy.
Thank God for the farsighted left, socialists and the radical Eco- greens. New Zealand will be saved by the mighty ETS, insulating the poor overtaxed people from the oppressions of Global Climate Disruption.
Maybe you can just keep it there in New Zealand and possibly Australia as an example of voter and government insanity on how too destroy economy’s with taxes.
Get ready for a cooling global climate curtsy of Global Climate Disruption or as we like to say weather as usual.
I would suggest a wonderful climate /weather tool that is simple read:
The infallible Weather rock @
http://www.usscouts.org/profbvr/weather_rock/
or
http://www.txroadrunners.com/images/pics/Funny6/WeatherRock.jpg
Send one to your PM and government members.
Seattle had a snowfall with similar damage about 15 or so years ago. Many roofs collapsed; apartment carport, and marina roofs included smashing everything they landed on. It wasn’t that the snowfall total’s were huge (they weren’t), but it was VERY WET snow. Very wet snow gives a much higher snow weight load for volume than dry snow, or even “average” snow.
I’d think this was also a wet snow.
I note that the collapsed structures appear to be either young (the stadium is 10 years old) or cheap and lightly built (greenhouses etc.).
I don’t know how rare snow in Invercargill is, but it is next to a large expanse of the Southern Ocean, and the minimum temperatures are often quite close to those in Auckland (some 9 degrees or so further north).
In 1992 there was a 2 metre snowfall in Queenstown at a similar time of year (best skiing I’ve ever had in NZ, in October, on my first visit). A lot of new born lambs died across the south of the South Island. So I don’t think there’s much that’s exceptional about the snowfall, perhaps just the damage to some roofed structures in Invercargill.
In Queenstown, the old timers have been saying for 2 or 3 winters that the climate is reverting to its familiar pattern of 30+ years ago, with colder winters).
All the best.
La Nina brings greater precipitation- snow and rain. Heavy snow in southern Oz, plus drought breaking rains. Up here in tropics yesterdays rain event broke records for heaviest 1 day September rain, was 10 times September average (in 12 hours). Last time we had this much rain in September locally was 1926. La Nina seems to be deepening, looking forward to very wet (and milder) wet season this summer. Not global warming, global cooling, but La Nina.
Ken
Ted Gray says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Absolutely Ted – political expediency is an extraordinary thing to experience.
Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Couldn’t agree more and same for Chch – we are experiencing more weeks of clear crisp winter days with morning frosts along with regular westerly and southerly weather systems bringing decent dollops of snow onto the Southern Alps and foothills. Just like during the 70’s and 80’s!
Don’t worry, now that they have their permanent carbon tax, they’ll declare it’s working and the planet is cooling off, then they can start work on the permanent “snow tax” that’ll pay for severe winter-weather damage. At least it should, but you know how government works, they’ll just throw the money into a slush fund…
The snow was a mix of Hail, Ice, Snow and rain and was extremely heavy compared to any snow I have experienced in the UK or European ski fields which is normally light and fluffy, this stuff was more luck the slush you get on the side of the road!! The building regulations probably do need reviewing but I doubt this same event will happen again for many years with this strange mix of snow types.
This cold snap which hit New Zealand struck Tasmania, Australia, last week, 15th or 16th, I don’t recall exactly. It did feature on TV News, but I can’t find a link. For the last several weeks here in Sydney, Australia, we’ve been having average to below average temps so far for September.
My sister in the UK says very frosty monings, reminds me of the 1970’s.
The ETS is almost the last straw for me. Our government is used this eco-guilt tax to extract money from a productive sector (farming), gain political support from our apartheid-like political party (Maori Party… where the tribal elite have been gifted huge forestry interests and subsequently have received gigantic ETS tax credits..!) and every NZ pays more for electricity, even hydro/geothermal energy because of how our energy market is structured. And the kicker on this is the state owns many of the electricity retailers that are ‘passing on’ the ETS costs to the business and domestic consumers. Man… we’ve been stitched up!
Richard Holle says:
Moon at maximum South declinational culmination, on the 15th peak of severe/extreme weather expected for next three days, would be the default forecast.
There are actually published papers supporting the notion that the moon influences our weather…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/moon-causes-monthly-atmospheric-tides/
I’m ever more convinced that Gaia is pissed at the AGW’ers. First the Gore Effect, then The Gore Effect by Proxy on his followers, now any country passing ETS gets snowed under…
It’s worse than we thought. It wasn’t enough for our NIWA to lose their working out for adjustments that increased our warming trend in NZ, or our government to pass an ETS (which oddly enough seems to be very effective if our cold weather recently is anything to go by). Now our university faculty are getting in on drafting the IPCC report and suggesting catastrophic sea level rise is even more likely:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4152526/NZ-climate-change-warning
Huth says:
Sounds like construction regs need to be updated so that buildings can withstand heavy snow on their roofs. Japan is doing pretty well against earthquakes; NZ should be able to manage a bit of snow! 😉
That is rather unfair. NIWA promised us that due to AGW we were unlikely to see many more snow falls, so why should we need design buildings to withstand any snow loading?
“Japan is doing pretty well against earthquakes; NZ should be able to manage a bit of snow! ;-)”
We thought we were doing earthquakes?
Meantime in breaking news today, the Royal Society of NZ drags out some old stories from the last IPCC report.
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/7988693/scientists-warn-nz-should-plan-for-higher-sea-levels/
Scientists warn NZ should plan for higher sea levels
NZPA September 21, 2010, 7:53 pm
“There have been a flood of new estimates of sea level rise,” said Prof Martin Manning, a drafting author of that most recent IPCC report.
Now director of Victoria University’s climate change research institute, he told a briefing for science journalists today that new analysis of the main contributing factors had shown loss of glaciers and ice sheets was playing a bigger role than was previously thought.
…
“Some scientists think that Greenland is close to a ‘tipping point’,” Prof Manning said.
The Eco-machine is in high gear it seems these days in NZ. I recall in the 2000’s DoC spending NZ$800,000 moving 800 native worms a few kilometers during a road building project. Yes, that is right. Each worm cost NZ$1000 to move. I could have done it for NZ$250!
I don’t know about moving worms, but it cost $6 million to move 6000 snails. Don’t laugh too much – there are are lots of endangered species in NZ.
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/southland-times-the/mi_8058/is_20100410/endangered-snails-living-fridges/ai_n53155694/
Solid Energy national environment manager Mark Pizey said the company spent $6 million moving more than 6000 snails from the ridgeline of its opencast coal mine in 2006.
http://www.coalnz.com/index.cfm/1,448,798,0,html/Relocating-Native-Land-Snails
Powelliphanta “Augustus” is a land snail which is native to New Zealand.
During mining operations on the Stockton Plateau this endangered species was living along the Mt Augustus ridgeline. For mining to take place and for Solid Energy to meet its environmental policy to “Reasonably minimise the adverse local environmental affects that may be an unavoidable part of Native Land Snailoperating coal mines”, a solution had to be sought.
…
Following collection of the snails, much of the original habitat was moved 800 metres north. The technique is called “vegetation direct transfer” and involves precise excavation by mechanical digger so that soil and vegetation is kept largely intact and can be moved to a new location by track.
…
About 5% of all released adult snails have been tagged with miniature transponders for short-term monitoring.
Actually, the roof collapse was the result of metal fatigue due to inordinate expansion and contraction from the change from Global Warming to Global Climate Disruption. Natural frequency appears to be about every 7 minutes.
Here is the latest on the severe storms in New Zealand.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/storm-batters-north-island-3793845
Anthony, you can add to the list:
Tens of thousands of lambs have died over the past five days after snow and bitterly cold. Lack of food and shelter. Bigger disaster for farmers than the recent earthquake.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/snow-hit-farmers-call-help-3795585
Have any one attempted that previously?