Blood red sun greets NZ on New Years Day as Australian bushfire smoke stains skies

Wednesday, 1 January 2020

Satellite imagery shows smoke from bush fires drifting across the Tasman Sea.

An orange haze is covering the sky around New Zealand, reducing visibility to as little as 10km in affected areas.

Bushfires in Australia are spewing a massive current of smoke across the Tasman towards New Zealand, and it's likely to continue for a while.

Imagery from the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 shows the blanket of smoke is wide enough to cover the entire South Island.

Visibility in the affected areas is as low as 10km due to the hazy skies. MetService said a change in wind direction is expected to clear the smoke later in the afternoon.

Smoke from bushfires in Australia seen over New Zealand on January 1.

* Family chooses to stay to save the home from fire**

The haze is particularly obvious in Otago where a light yellow cloud cover gives the area a sepia-toned feel.

Many in Dunedin said they could smell a smoky scent in the air.

Satellite images show the smoke is passing directly over the entire South Island.

In Lyttleton, Christchurch, Dudley Jackson snapped an image of the rising sun with a deep orange hue.

From a boat at Waiheke Island early in the morning, Glyn Kerr captured a remarkable red sky and a dramatic reflection off the water.

Pyselman said MetService had been tracking the smoke for several weeks since the fires began.

'It's been happening for quite some time since the Aussie bushfires have been going. At the moment it's definitely more noticeable, especially over the South Island.

'It's off and on, when we get a particular setup with the way the upper winds are it tends to come across. We haven't had it consistently but at the moment we've got a front moving on to the South Island.'

The smoke wouldn't have any impact on weather or temperatures in New Zealand, Pyselman said.

Smoke from the Australian bushfires that has crossed the Tasman stains the sky in Wanaka.

'It's only a really thin haze, temperatures are pretty warm but it's not really anything to do with that.'

Winds will continue to push smoke towards New Zealand for the next few days, but wind directions should change around, he said.

'It will probably peter out. At the moment its coming across on norwesterly flow, but later in the week the winds will be more southwesterly, so we probably won't see as much.'

The final day of the year proved to be a record-breakingly hot one for the small Otago town of Ranfurly.

According to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), town reached 32.3 degrees Celsius between 6pm and 7pm on Tuesday – the hottest December temperature for the town since records started back in 1897

Yellow skies over Queenstown on Wednesday morning.

The early morning sun as seen from Christchurch.

Red skies over Taylors Mistake Beach, Christchurch.

The sweltering weather surpassed the town's previous December record of 31.3C set back in 2017.

According to Niwa's national climate database, New Zealand's highest air temperature on record was 42.4C recorded in Rangiora, North Canterbury on February 7, 1973.

Ranfurly, well-known for its weather extremes, holds the lowest air temperature on record of -25.6C on July 17, 1903.