Wow! The cold weather has come and hit us right in the butt. Here in Taranaki over the last few days have had in excess of 70mm of rain and some bitter cold temperatures. I was out driving around last night when a massive hail storm hit. It was amazing to see my temperature reading on my car plummet from 6 degrees to 3 degrees in a matter of seconds. The hail was awesome. I haven’t seen a lot of hail in my short life so for me it was the biggest hail storm I have ever seen. The road was almost like a white out.
My brother called me at 9am yesterday morning from Dunedin where he is attending university. He was telling me that it was snowing, and was really excited. The snow fall that Mt Taranaki has experienced is apparently the lowest recorded snowfall for over 4 years. So the wintery blast definitely had a kick to it. My mother who lives in Westport was telling me just before that they have had rain for 3 days solid and that the whole area is like a swamp with so much water all over. Let’s just hope that some of this is reaching our hydro lakes so that I can turn my heater on. LOL.
Anyway the wintery blast isn’t over yet. I was just looking at the weather forecast and the maps to see where all this cold air is coming from. And with my knowledge of navigation and weather is telling me that the temperature gauges are going to plummet further. In Taranaki I expect that we will be hit by more and probably more unsettled weather at like 2 or 3pm this afternoon and the showers after the rain band which I think will last for the next 2 days. But it will gradually get better from Thursday morning. But the whole country looks like it is in for a blast from the Polar Regions tonight. My poor mum.
This is what the weather situation looked like at 6am NZST (this morning) Very very ugly!!! You can see what hit us over the the last few days and whats about to hit us, which has far colder air than the previous fronts.
The interesting thing that I have encountered is the activity of people when it got cold. This week I have had hardly any enquiry, hardly any contact with people at all. The weather just seems to turn people off and puts us into hibernation. Although this month has been quite buoyant with selling a house a day this week has been rather slow.
But in light of this cold weather and this time of year there is always some good news. The first is I can probably go snowboarding. YAY for me. If anyone wants to come I’m looking at going in two weeks time. But on a more positive note Saturday was the winter solstice (the shortest day). So from here on in the days are just going to get longer and warmer. Oh and before we know it, it’s going to be CHRISTMASS.
Well everyone rug up and keep warm over the next few days. It could be a wild ride.