Weather Watch: Bird's eye view of a low

A view of the cloud formations below. Photo / Philip Duncan

Last Thursday I flew into Sydney, flying directly over the top of the low that brought all the weekend flooding to eastern Bay of Plenty and gales to the Southern Alps. It was stunning to see the vast frontal cloud then the large centre of the low (that took up a big chunk of the Tasman Sea). Over the centre there were just a few shower clouds beneath us but in the distance you could see a clear wall of cloud that was the slow moving front on the eastern side of the low.

As we came in to Sydney the plane started to bounce around in the wind/turbulence as we landed into a howling southerly. This was the tail end of the low - while at the exact same time hurricane force winds from the opposite direction (northerlies) were slamming Mt Hutt.

It was the first time in my life I had witnessed both sides of a large low over just a short 3.5 hour period.

In Bondi waves several metres high slammed the eastern coastline of Sydney. Not even the surfers were going to brave this sea. Waves crashed against the eastern cliff tops and spray went several storeys high.

However in 24 hours Sydney had blue skies, no wind and 21 degrees. Meanwhile at the exact same time I had the Herald calling me to be interviewed about the torrential rain that was moving over northern New Zealand.

It's quite amazing to get a rare eyewitness account from above the clouds of a low that fills up the entire Tasman Sea and then see the affects in both New Zealand and Australia.

On the Air New Zealand flight (amazing service again by the way) I sat in the aisle next to Mike Williams, former president of the Labour Party, he was very polite but I'm sure he must've been sick of me leaning over him to take photos several times out of his window. I'm a fairly seasoned traveller but on this particular flight I was like a child flying for the first time, just fascinated with the weather happening below us. Most people in the plane wouldn't have seen or understood what I was seeing. They were just cloudy areas.

Interestingly on the return flight the jet stream provided us with a 160km/h tail wind. At one point we were travelling at about 1100km/h and the flight, which took 3.5 hours from NZ to Australia, took just 2.5 on the way back.

The low affected both nations - Australia had highs in the mid 20s in the east, while snow fell in Tasmania and damaging gales hit 100km/h in Victoria.

In New Zealand we had rainfall figures reaching close to 300mm for this event in the hills off Whakatane and of course those strong winds that trapped all the skiers at Mount Hutt.

And guess what? We have more on the way over the next 10 days, with low number 2 arriving tomorrow, Tuesday.

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