Southern Hemisphere Growing Season 22/23

[cbmnz]

9 hours ago, Tyrone said:

Well that was probably the driest summer on record down here. I think we may have made 12mm in the 3 months of summer. March so far looks like it may be transitioning to something a tad more moist. Windy.com has my ten day accumulated rainfall forecast at 34mm, which will feel like a real soaking if it happens. This summer has been more like a Perth summer if you look at rainfall. However it has been a humid summer with a fair amount of cloud cover and warm nights. I’m glad I’ve got good irrigation. My house water tank supply is looking a bit sad. I think we are down to 50% and I’ve never seen it that low in the 9 years I’ve been here. The last few years at this time it was almost full or over flowing. I had to stop hand watering with house water about a week ago when I realised just how low we were. 

Such a contrast to here - had a very dry summer 2019-2020 but not 12mm in 3 months, that is extreme.

Often when think some weather event is very usual, find have a short memory or it has happened before,  before most living now's time but in  the 1960's , 40's 30's etc so not that long ago in the scheme of nature - but this summer really was off scale.t.

[Tyrone]

It’s been raining a bit this evening and it’s nice to hear water pouring into the water tank. 

[Phil Petersen]

Forecast to have 25mm here in next 3 days starting tonight. That'll be great as everything is very dry and needs it. It would take a long time on the hose to make any difference.  Forecast high of 23c then dropping later with a moist southerly.

3rd spears of the growing season are just now popping up on the chathams nikau as 2nd fronds finish opening. Have until Dec to possibly get a 4th frond for the year. The bigger palms are pushing faster. A purpurea is still pushing its first spear of the growing season 🐌

Unreal how much rain the north has had. I see Wairoa and other parts of Hawkes Bay had well over 500mm in 24 hours with some locations getting over 400mm in 12 hours. Astounding. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Phil Petersen

[Tyrone]

6 hours ago, Phil Petersen said:

Forecast to have 25mm here in next 3 days starting tonight. That'll be great as everything is very dry and needs it. It would take a long time on the hose to make any difference.  Forecast high of 23c then dropping later with a moist southerly.

3rd spears of the growing season are just now popping up on the chathams nikau as 2nd fronds finish opening. Have until Dec to possibly get a 4th frond for the year. The bigger palms are pushing faster. A purpurea is still pushing its first spear of the growing season 🐌

Unreal how much rain the north has had. I see Wairoa and other parts of Hawkes Bay had well over 500mm in 24 hours with some locations getting over 400mm in 12 hours. Astounding. 

It’s great see good healthy growth on your palms.

The situation in the north island is just incredible with those sort of rain totals. We originally planned to fly out to Auckland tonight but the crazy weather and the extensive damage it caused ended our NZ trip.

We had a couple of mm of rain overnight and everything is damp and humid this morning. At sunrise it was around 20C with 97%RH and a moisture haze in the air. You can smell all the Eucalyptus in the air. I’ve just gone for a quick walk around and many palms are popping open new spears. I love these sort of mornings. My banana is just starting to flower too. Hopefully we have a mild winter and it holds onto the bunch. We are officially going for a humid 28C today but another forecast says 31C. It’s gonna feel tropical. 

[cbmnz]

Some more habitat photos taken yesterday, being under a canopy dominated by Kohekohe gave this part of the track a very tropical look.

 

[Bennz]

We missed the worst of the bad weather, but half an hour drive away people have lost everything. It's also been a lot drier than most of HB, our rainfall total in my usually dry part of NZ for the year to date is just under 600mm (long term average would be 140mm by early March), some other farmers less than an hours drive away I know had over 700mm in 2 days, and lost most of their farms in landslides.  This will be personally, economically and ecologically devastating for the region, I just hope it does not end with a push for more stupid pine/carbon forests.

 

I'm currently in Auckland and have not yet seen any signs of damage at all from the bad weather anywhere North of Turangi.  Although to be fair the usual route to Auckland was extended by over 250km because of road closures, and the usual 5.5-6hour drive took 11 hours instead due to road repairs and constant delays, so perhaps I was not as fresh I could have been when we arrived last night!

[cbmnz]

On 3/7/2023 at 8:55 AM, Bennz said:

We missed the worst of the bad weather, but half an hour drive away people have lost everything. It's also been a lot drier than most of HB, our rainfall total in my usually dry part of NZ for the year to date is just under 600mm (long term average would be 140mm by early March), some other farmers less than an hours drive away I know had over 700mm in 2 days, and lost most of their farms in landslides.  This will be personally, economically and ecologically devastating for the region, I just hope it does not end with a push for more stupid pine/carbon forests.

 

I'm currently in Auckland and have not yet seen any signs of damage at all from the bad weather anywhere North of Turangi.  Although to be fair the usual route to Auckland was extended by over 250km because of road closures, and the usual 5.5-6hour drive took 11 hours instead due to road repairs and constant delays, so perhaps I was not as fresh I could have been when we arrived last night!

Good your farm is ok but so many are not. After two weeks,  the damage North of Turangi will be a little less obvious. There are not whole floodplains covered in silt. Flood damaged household contents have mostly been collected from  kerbside now, most downed trees have been cut, roads still damaged are closed so won't see the damage as won't be using them anyway. Someone arriving and driving around large parts of Auckland ,Waikato and Bay of Plenty now could miss that anything happened 3 weeks ago.

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by cbmnz

[Phil Petersen]

Didnt get below 21degrees here last night. Very humid NW flow coming over the alps. Hopefully some decent rainfall will spill over the ranges to this side of the island. Still feels a lot like summer. Getting 4+m3 of topsoil up a hill and into raised landscape beds for planting this season so looking forward to having that complete. Tough work!

[Phil Petersen]

On 3/6/2023 at 1:05 PM, cbmnz said:

Some more habitat photos taken yesterday, being under a canopy dominated by Kohekohe gave this part of the track a very tropical look.

 

Kohekohe forest in flower is an amazing sight. Great having all those flowers on the trunks right at viewing level. Where is this track? 

[cbmnz]

8 hours ago, Phil Petersen said:

Kohekohe forest in flower is an amazing sight. Great having all those flowers on the trunks right at viewing level. Where is this track? 

It was the start of the track up to the summit of Mt Te Aroha, from the town.  Only went to the first lookout on this occasion.

[Phil Petersen]

Strong SW front with mild 10c temps and heavy downpours came through last night at 3am. It was very loud and blustery so woke me up. 18mm fell before dawn then it cleared up. Garden will be loving the rain. Moved lots of topsoil up the hill over the weekend into a planting location so will be great to help get that bedded in. That's going to be the location of my first rhopies in the ground next spring. More soil to move over the next few weeks 🤠

[cbmnz]

Warmish today for late March, 26.6 with bright sun.  First lot of actual bananas visible as flower has started to open.

[Tyrone]

Mins around 26C and max around 29C with high humidity and afternoon tropical thunderstorms here. Blue skies at the moment then this afternoon it will be raining heavy in all likelihood. 

[Tyrone]

Another afternoon thunderstorm after a humid 28C.

[Foxpalms]

8 hours ago, Tyrone said:

Another afternoon thunderstorm after a humid 28C.

I'm presuming that's not Albany because of all the coconuts. Looks very tropical.

[Tyrone]

7 hours ago, Foxpalms said:

I'm presuming that's not Albany because of all the coconuts. Looks very tropical.

Correct. I’m in Mauritius.

The thunderstorms here are next level. The cloud builds almost stationary over the mountains starting mid morning and by mid afternoon they expand over to the coast and Wham!!! The other day we were taking sunset shots and I was just walking through that area with the coconuts and out of nowhere a ball of intense blinding white lightening appeared with an instantaneous explosion, it’s a wonder it didn’t shatter the windows of the hotel. We bolted under cover because it was that close. The flash was like looking at the flash on a giant arc welder. Incredible. 

[Foxpalms]

10 minutes ago, Tyrone said:

Correct. I’m in Mauritius.

The thunderstorms here are next level. The cloud builds almost stationary over the mountains starting mid morning and by mid afternoon they expand over to the coast and Wham!!! The other day we were taking sunset shots and I was just walking through that area with the coconuts and out of nowhere a ball of intense blinding white lightening appeared with an instantaneous explosion, it’s a wonder it didn’t shatter the windows of the hotel. We bolted under cover because it was that close. The flash was like looking at the flash on a giant arc welder. Incredible. 

It would be amazing if you could get some shots of dictyosperma in their natural habitat. Watching tropical storms is always fun!

[Tyrone]

5 hours ago, Foxpalms said:

It would be amazing if you could get some shots of dictyosperma in their natural habitat. Watching tropical storms is always fun!

We did get shots of Dictyosperma in habitat. Most of them, like 99.99999% of them were felled for palm heart as it’s a creole delicacy. But luckily they are a commonly cultivated palm in the Mascarenes and the birds have slowly been moving them back into where they originally were. Also I think the authorities are starting to plant a small amount back into the forest. Only 2% of Mauritius is now protected rainforest. 400 years ago it was all forest. The bit now protected is mostly exotics and very little native endemic plants remain. However in time those areas will be repopulated with Dictyosperma, Latania, and possibly even Acanthophoenix. We saw Acanthophoenix being moved by birds back into a Reunion rainforest, where technically they became extinct in the wild for the same reason.

[cbmnz]

On 3/22/2023 at 12:49 AM, Tyrone said:

We did get shots of Dictyosperma in habitat. Most of them, like 99.99999% of them were felled for palm heart as it’s a creole delicacy. But luckily they are a commonly cultivated palm in the Mascarenes and the birds have slowly been moving them back into where they originally were. Also I think the authorities are starting to plant a small amount back into the forest. Only 2% of Mauritius is now protected rainforest. 400 years ago it was all forest. The bit now protected is mostly exotics and very little native endemic plants remain. However in time those areas will be repopulated with Dictyosperma, Latania, and possibly even Acanthophoenix. We saw Acanthophoenix being moved by birds back into a Reunion rainforest, where technically they became extinct in the wild for the same reason.

I never realised Madagascar was mostly within the tropics until realised it's level with Mauritius where coconuts evidently grow like that.

[cbmnz]

@Phil Petersenwould have had some weather through eailier this week, hopefully was not affected. Yesterday moring here was a rude 4.6C min, a bit early for that. Was a cooler summer for highs, never officially reached 30C although my home station just did, a couple of times.

[Tyrone]

2 hours ago, cbmnz said:

I never realised Madagascar was mostly within the tropics until realised it's level with Mauritius where coconuts evidently grow like that.

Yeah Mauritius is at 20S and has what I’d call a mild tropical climate being an island a long way away from any continent and just north of the tropic of Capricorn. We didn’t see a day above 29C in Mauritius or Réunion island but the humidity was always in the 80-90% area or higher. I would say that the Mascarene Islands would have a climate nearly identical to eastern Madagascar. It’s not that far from Madagascar. We saw lots of Delonix regia (Royal Poinciana) trees and Ravenala madagascariensis was just everywhere in the forest in Mauritius. It’s how I picture Madagascar. 

Back home now and my place has seen 52mm of rain for March which is almost double the average. The grass has exploded and weeds are taking hold again. I’m glad the rain returned after our dismal 11mm for all of summer. Perth is expecting some rain. They’ve only had 3mm since the start of December 2022. It’s dry up there. Glad to return home to some cooler humidity. 

[Phil Petersen]

On 3/24/2023 at 12:36 PM, cbmnz said:

@Phil Petersenwould have had some weather through eailier this week, hopefully was not affected. Yesterday moring here was a rude 4.6C min, a bit early for that. Was a cooler summer for highs, never officially reached 30C although my home station just did, a couple of times.

Yes, we did. Strong wind was the main weather through here for a day or two (tuesday/weds). We had ~100kph+ wind from the south which was a bit of a shock for everything after such a calm, sunny summer. 40mm of rain too, mainly on tuesday (21st). Doing a bit of a tidy up today as 1 or 2 shelter trees (tagasaste, and olearia) took a beating and need straightening up. They did the job though as all the fruit trees are fine. All the palms are fine as they are in a shade house. One chathams nikau was outside the shadehouse and only got a couple of folded leaflets on one frond. Was well forecasted, so moved a few potted fruit trees like white sapote, japoticaba and avo into more sheltered positions. A good reminder for me that the odd crazy wind event here on the southeast coast will need to be factored in when siting, and protecting young palms in the landscape.

The attached metservice record is from the CBD so more protected from wind than the hillside at the base of the peninsula where I live.  Feels like summer is starting to fade now and wont be long till we get a 5deg overnight low I reckon.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Phil Petersen
Spelling

[Tyrone]

Yesterday we had a min of 19C and a max of 22.6C with very high humidity all day and drizzle with low cloud. I irrigated last night as it was still quite warm and then it rained anyway with a few mm so everything is nice and damp now. I’ve managed to find some Blue Java bananas and some Goldfinger bananas that I will plant this arvo in my more protected banana zone with some rich soil. I will see how far I can push them before it gets to winter. The rain and humidity should help. I’m hoping for a mild winter. 

[cbmnz]

On 3/25/2023 at 1:53 PM, Tyrone said:

Yesterday we had a min of 19C and a max of 22.6C with very high humidity all day and drizzle with low cloud. I irrigated last night as it was still quite warm and then it rained anyway with a few mm so everything is nice and damp now. I’ve managed to find some Blue Java bananas and some Goldfinger bananas that I will plant this arvo in my more protected banana zone with some rich soil. I will see how far I can push them before it gets to winter. The rain and humidity should help. I’m hoping for a mild winter. 

Almost got your >20C overnight low then, which you still have not recorded?

[cbmnz]

On 3/25/2023 at 12:42 PM, Phil Petersen said:

Yes, we did. Strong wind was the main weather through here for a day or two (tuesday/weds). We had ~100kph+ wind from the south which was a bit of a shock for everything after such a calm, sunny summer. 40mm of rain too, mainly on tuesday (21st). Doing a bit of a tidy up today as 1 or 2 shelter trees (tagasaste, and olearia) took a beating and need straightening up. They did the job though as all the fruit trees are fine. All the palms are fine as they are in a shade house. One chathams nikau was outside the shadehouse and only got a couple of folded leaflets on one frond. Was well forecasted, so moved a few potted fruit trees like white sapote, japoticaba and avo into more sheltered positions. A good reminder for me that the odd crazy wind event here on the southeast coast will need to be factored in when siting, and protecting young palms in the landscape.

The attached metservice record is from the CBD so more protected from wind than the hillside at the base of the peninsula where I live.  Feels like summer is starting to fade now and wont be long till we get a 5deg overnight low I reckon.

Palms seem to generally handle the max TS to Cat 1 hurricane equivalent winds (Saffir–Simpson) that we get. The spears on some of mine got a bit prematurely opened by cyclone Gabriel but a month later would not know, it does not seem to have harmed the frond at all. Still, the more shelter, the better.

[cbmnz]

A year or two ago we discussing how far South + inland  Archontophoenix would grow to maturity in NZ, I mentioned had never spotted any in the tourist city of Rotorua which sits in a Caldera about 300m above sea level.

Which was strange as generally temps below -3C are infrequent and short lived so they should survive.

This past weekend was there helping family get to an event , while filling in some time near one of the event venues, came across some really nice ones. A property near the lake edge had a towering 8-10m mature one, but nearby, a very nice house had a whole embankment terraced and filled out with dozens of large Archontophoenix, Rhopies and CIDP.  They were all maintained to perfection and could tell they had been growing for years and years, not just dropped in this summer.

Didn't take photos and reluctant to even say what part of the city it was as the area had neighbourhood watch signs everywhere, but now I know they grow fine there.

 

 

 

[Tyrone]

Today is the coolest day in ages with a max of 18.4C. A couple of days ago we were having higher minimums and humidity to boot. The cooling off is happening already. The endless cloud has returned.. A 26C day is forecast for Sunday so that’s something to look forward too. It was a coolish summer just gone. Summer didn’t get here until about the 3rd week in January and the max we recorded was around 38C. This meant that nothing got sunburnt this year. The year previous we had a freak day of 43.5C and even things in dappled shade burnt. If we have a mild winter then maybe we can get a year or two in without foliage damage. 

[Phil Petersen]

On 3/26/2023 at 10:13 PM, cbmnz said:

A year or two ago we discussing how far South + inland  Archontophoenix would grow to maturity in NZ, I mentioned had never spotted any in the tourist city of Rotorua which sits in a Caldera about 300m above sea level.

Which was strange as generally temps below -3C are infrequent and short lived so they should survive.

This past weekend was there helping family get to an event , while filling in some time near one of the event venues, came across some really nice ones. A property near the lake edge had a towering 8-10m mature one, but nearby, a very nice house had a whole embankment terraced and filled out with dozens of large Archontophoenix, Rhopies and CIDP.  They were all maintained to perfection and could tell they had been growing for years and years, not just dropped in this summer.

Didn't take photos and reluctant to even say what part of the city it was as the area had neighbourhood watch signs everywhere, but now I know they grow fine there.

 

 

 

That's cool to hear and would have been nice to see.  We know of the mature Archontophoenix in Sumner, Chch. But that is very coastal.

I'll see if I can do it in Dunedin 🤠.. .although the Purpurea didn't manage to push a single frond this summer. Might bring it inside over winter to get it to finsh the current spear and put it outside again (in the shade house) in the spring.  The much smaller subpinnate cunninghamianas pushed just one tiny spear each.  

[PalmCode]

20c on a mostly sunny day today. Good growing weather at the moment. My newly planted A.Purpurea has taken well to its new home. Its new growth spear has really shot up and growing quite steady, seems a bit faster now in the ground. 

[Tyrone]

17C and fog at 7.30am.

 

[sandgroper]

Great photo Tyrone.

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by sandgroper
Typo

[Tyrone]

Well summer is now well behind us. We hit 19.9C today with rain quite heavy at times. We’ve had 17mm today and 27mm for the month and it’s only the 5th.The BOM was forecasting a dry as a chip April but that hasn’t happened. We are now at that point where it’s almost cold enough to light the fire. 

[UK_Palms]

On 3/28/2023 at 10:08 PM, Phil Petersen said:

That's cool to hear and would have been nice to see.  We know of the mature Archontophoenix in Sumner, Chch. But that is very coastal.

I'll see if I can do it in Dunedin 🤠.. .although the Purpurea didn't manage to push a single frond this summer. Might bring it inside over winter to get it to finsh the current spear and put it outside again (in the shade house) in the spring.  The much smaller subpinnate cunninghamianas pushed just one tiny spear each.  

Just curious but what was your highest temperature this summer gone and what was the rainfall total there at the bottom end of the South Island? From my understanding you guys weren’t impacted as much by the excessive rain and below average temps?

[Phil Petersen]

15 hours ago, UK_Palms said:

Just curious but what was your highest temperature this summer gone and what was the rainfall total there at the bottom end of the South Island? From my understanding you guys weren’t impacted as much by the excessive rain and below average temps?

 

Not sure what our average highs were through summer but the city station collected the following data which relates to max recorded highs. We had a good summer down south compared to up north (if you dont mind endless watering of the garden). We were unscathed by the ex tropical cyclone madness down here luckily 🤞. Was a wet March - but good for growing after such a dry season. 

[UK_Palms]

6 hours ago, Phil Petersen said:

Not sure what our average highs were through summer but the city station collected the following data which relates to max recorded highs. We had a good summer down south compared to up north (if you dont mind endless watering of the garden). We were unscathed by the ex tropical cyclone madness down here luckily 🤞. Was a wet March - but good for growing after such a dry season. 

That is still a fairly wet summer with around 126mm / 5 inches of rainfall across the season. Obviously a lot drier than places like Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, but still pretty wet. For context, I only had 29mm / 1.2 inches last summer across the 3 months with nothing at all in July. I think Tyrone had something like 13mm / 0.5 inches over summer near Albany.

A 30.4C max during an above average summer is pretty surprising as well for 45N. That is still lower than Edinburgh in Scotland last summer. Do you know whether it was a bad year for tomato blight in your area, or New Zealand in general? I could imagine it would have decimated the tomato crops over there with all that rain? I suppose it would have been a good year for the Rhopies and Archontophoenix however.

[Tyrone]

23 hours ago, Phil Petersen said:

 

Not sure what our average highs were through summer but the city station collected the following data which relates to max recorded highs. We had a good summer down south compared to up north (if you dont mind endless watering of the garden). We were unscathed by the ex tropical cyclone madness down here luckily 🤞. Was a wet March - but good for growing after such a dry season. 

I can relate to the wet March after a dry summer. Probably similar climate drivers at work in our locations. I think March was around 60mm of rain with most falling in a short period related to a big thunderstorm down here. April is turning out to be consistently moist even though the BOM predicted a very dry spell. If we can keep some moisture in the atmosphere and cloud cover with warmer westerlies around winter solstice I will be happy. 

[Tyrone]

The clouds early on Thursday night looking east.

[Phil Petersen]

On 4/6/2023 at 11:30 PM, UK_Palms said:

That is still a fairly wet summer with around 126mm / 5 inches of rainfall across the season. Obviously a lot drier than places like Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, but still pretty wet. For context, I only had 29mm / 1.2 inches last summer across the 3 months with nothing at all in July. I think Tyrone had something like 13mm / 0.5 inches over summer near Albany.

A 30.4C max during an above average summer is pretty surprising as well for 45N. That is still lower than Edinburgh in Scotland last summer. Do you know whether it was a bad year for tomato blight in your area, or New Zealand in general? I could imagine it would have decimated the tomato crops over there with all that rain? I suppose it would have been a good year for the Rhopies and Archontophoenix however.

We normally get evenly-spread rainfall throughout the year here (including summer) so are pretty lucky for growing in that respect.

It was a drier, slightly cooler summer here with 50% of normal local rainfall so a lot of farmers were using winter animal feed in summer, while up north some areas literally had 500year rainfall events (500mm+ in 24hours, with over 400mm of that falling in 12hours) from a series of ex tropical cyclones. Tomato blight may have been a problem. 

Also, NZ is a true oceanic climate in the middle of the roaring 40s latitude airflow spinning around between the Pacific and Southern oceans here so it's never going to be strongly influenced by any continental landmasses to produce any extreme temperature days like those experienced in your part of the world (OZ is 1,500+km away). Down south here in Dunedin, summer normally ticks along at low to mid 20 deg maximums for a few months with the odd 30deg+ day,  and the odd day with a max in the low teens- then the cold seasons are very mild here on the coast with generally no overnight ambient sub-zero minimums to worry about. 

[Phil Petersen]

On 4/7/2023 at 2:31 PM, Tyrone said:

I can relate to the wet March after a dry summer. Probably similar climate drivers at work in our locations. I think March was around 60mm of rain with most falling in a short period related to a big thunderstorm down here. April is turning out to be consistently moist even though the BOM predicted a very dry spell. If we can keep some moisture in the atmosphere and cloud cover with warmer westerlies around winter solstice I will be happy. 

It was a relief to get some decent rain in March over around 3 main rainfall events. Greened everything back up again. Really windy here at the moment with strong NE winds along the coast. Was planning to plant some shelter trees in strategic spots to block the NE this weekend but might wait till next weekend. Not much rain here this month so far. Generally Autumn is clear calm  weather and not particularly wet at all ... but we shall see.

[cbmnz]

Photo taken and posted by member spwill on the NZ Weather forum. Damage was very localised but two tornados struck in last 24 hours adding to the events of this year. What I'm wondering is where is the rootball on this CIDP?