The Canterbury Nor'wester
New Zealand is well known for its beautiful diversity of landscape. The South Island especially has unique weather patterns from its diverse physical geography. An excellent example of this is the Southern Alps influence on the Canterbury Plains located on the southeast side of New Zealand’s South Island. Here one can witness one of the most dramatic weather patterns in the world - the Canterbury Nor’westerly, which usually takes place in the spring (Mullan, Tait, and Thompson). The Canterbury Nor’westerly is a wind pattern caused by prevailing westerly surface winds that carry low pressure winds eastward to the South Island; depressions (systems of low atmospheric pressure) develop in these winds as they travel east (Metservice). The westerlies also contain a lot of moisture; as they hit the Southern Alps on the South Island, they rise and cause a rainshadow effect that drops the majority of moisture on the western slope of the Alps but continue over the mountains to ...