In the last ezine I said ".. Auckland should be in for mainly settled conditions until 24th.." which it was, deteriorating between then and 26th. Why? Moon, of course! Ah, but you KNEW that. Sunday 27th(today)is the perigee, when the Moon is closest for the month. But being the 6th closest for the year means that gusty winds and associated conditions will be have been not too severe. Also unsettlement usually clears itself by the perigee, the day of which signals calming of any winds and the abating of most precipitation. Unfortunately the metservice is ignorant of all such matters, as according to Augie et all, in Friday evening's weather report this weekend in the north was supposed to see hardly any rain on Saturday with it all falling on SUNDAY. And I am looking out the window at much blue sky on Sunday whilst writing this. One wonders why all those billions of taxpayers' money's worth of satellite technology are spent when they can't get it right a day before. Sure, I get it wrong sometimes too, but overall from some months beforehand my hit rate is high, without any access to all their massive resources.
Floods have left over 100,000 homeless in India. The past week was lunar perigee week, with the northern declination last Friday (25th)and the New Moon next Tuesday (29th). Because the perigee is still in the northern hemisphere and will continue to be until 2003, one does expect the worst weather in THAT hemisphere at these Moon significant times. Europe has copped it too, and some eastern parts of USA, where the hurricane season has just commenced.
Mainly fine weather will be over NZ for the next few days, with some light showers Monday and on Wednesday 30th just after Tuesday's New Moon. While the north still has moisture remaining in the atmosphere, most of the country sees fine reliable weather by 3rd September. But don't go planning any barbecues for the 11th.
For the benefit of travelers there in coming months, a summary of daily weather for the UK right until the end of November has been posted on my website www.predictweather.com in the Freemonth column.
The recent receding of North Pole ice has got scientists grabbing headlines again with see-I-told-you-so nonsense about it being "proof" of global warming. It is no such thing. The world is warming slightly, yes, due to the Moon increasing its transit range between latitudes, part of its 18.61 year cycle which sees milder temperatures increasing up to 2005/6. The midpoint of this cycle is January 2001. But the poles aren't disappearing and it's got nothing to do with emissions. The ice will start to return to normal levels in a month. Remember that the world has to heat to +36degreesC more ALL OVER if it's going to melt the poles. Besides, Antarctica is not showing signs of the same recession. And are we forgetting that it is the height of summer right now up at the North Pole? Just a wee titbit I thought I'd throw in. Seems to have escaped the attention of those expert climatologists.
Q:Ý Is the world getting larger due to the cooling of the interior? Would
that account for the continental drift and the breaking up of tectonic
plates, so causing earthquakes?
(Murray Willis, Great Barrier)
A: I think so, yes. The sea floor is spreading and at the edges of the
continents there are deep trenches where the sea floor is being pushed
under those continents. It is also the areas where violent earthquakes are
taking place, especially around the edges of the Pacific. Even a gain of,
say, half an inch a year of sea floor spread could add up to somewhere
near 1287km(800 miles) over a period of 100 million years. This distance
would be added to the Earth's circumference at the equator, and of course,
at the poles. Going back several hundred million years then, and
progressively deducting this amount from Earth's circumference shows us a
much reduced Earth. It raises an interesting question. With the same
amount of atmosphere that is available on Earth now and which should have
been available then on a smaller sphere, the greater depth of the
atmosphere would be compressed by its own weight making for a higher
barometric pressure. Theoretically, only under those conditions would the
large prehistoric pterosaur have been able to fly. Their wings would have
had something more substantial to flap on. It would also explain why the
less efficient flyers became extinct or flightless and why seals,
porpoises and whales switched from land-based animals to become sea
residents; spending more time in the water as a way of adapting to
changing air and atmospheric pressures.
(I have been asked to leave this list up for a while)
Here, in inches, are August and September monthly average rainfall figures
for NZ main centres. The figures come from the last 10 years and some up
to 30 years. They are not gospel as they are metservice calculations which
don't take the lunar declinations into account, in which a drying takes
effect every nine years. Therefore the below averages may be a little
higher than what actually occurs in some areas. September averages are in
brackets.
Alexandra: 0.6 (0.8)
Ashburton: 1.9 (1.8)
Auckland: 4.4 (3.7)
Napier : 3.2 (2.3)
Blenheim : 2.7 (2.6)
Bluff : 2.6 (3.1)
Christchurch : 2.1 (1.8)
Dunedin: 3.0 (2.7)
Gisborne: 3.9 (2.9)
Greymouth: 8.3 (7.3)
Haast: 12.5 (11.5)
Hamilton: 4.0 (3.6)
Hastings: 2.7 (2.0)
Hokitika: 9.0 (9.0)
Invercargill: 2.4 (3.1)
Kaitaia: 5.4 (5.1)
Nelson: 3.2 (3.4)
New Plymouth: 5.6 (5.0)
Oamaru: 1.4 (1.8)
Palmerston North: 3.5 (2.9)
Queenstown: 2.5 (2.6)
Rotorua: 5.2 (4.9)
Taupo: 4.4 (3.9)
Tauranga: 4.8 (3.8)
Timaru: 1.4 (1.8)
Wanganui: 3.0 (2.5)
Wellington: 4.8 (3.9)
Westport: 7.3 (6.6)
Whakatane: 5.2 (3.7)
Whangarei: 10.1 (5.3)
NASA pics of all Earth from space
http://earth.jsc.nasa.gov/
World's newspapers
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
Contact
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