Rare snow in Wellington, NZ, August 14, 2011

Snow falling heavily in Wellington's higher suburbs August 14th. Rare to see this much snow in Wellington and, Johnsonville. In about half an hour it was 40mm deep. Overnight the settled snow topped 10mm (four inches), and persisted for days. For people not familiar with this region of the world, snow falling in Wellington (Latitude 41 south) is like snow falling in coastal Northern California, or snow falling in Rome, Italy or Barcelona, Spain! This was at about 200m altitiude (700feet). Most of Wellingtons suburbs sprawl over hills around the central harbour, CBD and port. Snow didn't settle below 400 feet. The highest suburbs top 300m, (900 feet) and some of those inhabitants couldn't get their cars out of their driveways for days. This is a once in 50 year event and the last snow in my 31 years I remember was in 1995, which was much lighter.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Wellington
• new zealand
• snow
• wellington
• johnsonville
• snow storm

[maxiboy666]

I still can't get my head around that it's winter in August in the Southern hemisphere but I suppose that's just down to the Roman calender and semantics really!

[pandemik0]

@maxiboy666 The tilt of the earth. We get the opposite season to the northern hemisphere. But this was two months out from winter solstice down here. Closer to spring than winter.

[mpkio]

I've also been thinking that the weather has been really crazy for the past year or so all over the world. Snow in NZ? Two hurricaines out of nowhere in North America? Here in the UK, we just had a day where it reached 30c in October! Winds are picking up to 175mph and we've had winters where its been so freezing temputures and snow all over the country! Global Warming my ass!!

You guys are so lucky! Want the snow now!!!! :)

[pandemik0]

@mpkio NZ gets snow all the time, it's just rare to come this low to sea level this region, but it does happen.

Global warming? There's a huge difference between "weather" and "climate" and "local" and global". Infact there's a planet sized difference. Global warming is thought to exacerbate local extremes - heat energy drives weather systems- so it may be making all these things a little worse than would have been.

[KouroshEntertainer]

IS THIS NEW ZEALAND? REALLY??

[pandemik0]

@KouroshEntertainer NZ does get snow. We do have skifields :) It usually doesn't come this close to sea level or this far north. The deep south, latitude 45 can get snow to sea level almost every year.

[linc43211]

@pandemik0

Thanks for posting this...so cool to see snow coming down in a North Island suburban street....and quite an affluent one by the looks of it. I'm from Auckland, live in Sydney, but spent time in Canada and miss the snow so much....it's a little bit of magic that interrupts our normally mundane lives.

[bordercollie1975]

@pandemik0 Looks fantastic though, wish it would snow in Sydney.

[pandemik0]

@bordercollie1975  ... lol ... uh... this wasn't a worldwide event... ?

[bordercollie1975]

Global cooling.

[darkheart1998]

That was an amazing time but I got a cold from that!