We are now in the solar winter – the three months of the year with the least amount of available sunlight. The long, colder, starry nights trigger something inside me – a bigger appreciation of the vacuum of outer space. Throw on top of that an incredible aurora and suddenly my attention is focused on Earth as a planet, rather than earth as a surface where I need to make a weather forecast.
Truly appreciating the uninhabitable vastness of outer space and the magnificent power of our sun suddenly puts our own localised weather (and maybe even life dramas) into perspective.
The solar radiation from the sun heats the space near our planet to 120degC. But if you’re an object in space and on the shady side, with no sunlight, then those temperatures plummet to -100degC or colder. So when our nights become as long as they are now, and Earth’s tilt means we in the southern hemisphere are facing more into outer space than we are looking towards our own sun, you can really get a better appreciation as to how much the sun keeps us warm and alive. Having the aurora at the weekend literally highlighted this even more.
But the appreciation of our planet – and the thin layers of gases that keep us all at mostly safe temperatures – are cold comfort if you’re farming and need the right conditions right now.
The weather pattern around New Zealand and Australia is one of high pressure and drier than usual weather. If you thought it was dry at your place in NZ, just ask a farmer or grower in Tasmania, Victoria or South Australia. Some locations haven’t had rain this year – or if they did, it wasn’t much. This stubborn high pressure belt is going to dominate for the entire month of May around the Tasmania and South Australia areas. This means NZ is on the edge of it – giving us better chances for rain, but also explaining why we’re having so many westerlies and southerlies in our forecast (although this past week we’ve had an autumnal classic with northerlies, easterlies, southerlies and westerlies all in the mix for a number of regions!)
The west to southwest lean and the added high pressure near Australia is why many areas that need more rain still aren’t getting it. Despite news stories about La Niña, we’re very much in an end-of-El-Niño set-up and the highs south of Australia are so powerful they are reducing the chances of chaos forming and increasing the likelihood of this pattern continuing.
We see no immediate end in sight to this – but are optimistic the “neutral” pattern we have now is going to eventually be kind to both us and Australia and bring in some overdue rain.
But as many of you already know, the fact we’re now in the solar winter means we’re now inside the darkest three months of the year. The solar winter ends in the first week of August. But to end on a positive note, the days do start to get longer again after June 21 this year.
