Successful PortWeather collaboration with Lyttelton

My first experience of weather measurement in Lyttelton was in 1975 when we had 2 Munro clockwork instruments in the port. This involved a weekly visit to a mounting platform, changing the paper roll, replenishing the ink and winding the clockwork drive. These were progressively upgraded to electrical then electronic instruments.

Following damage to our one instrument site as a result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes we took a fresh look at how we used and could use meteorological data, and as a result we increased our instrumentation sites to 7, 4 of which were in Lyttelton. This number now stands at 9 land based sites, plus 3 marine wave and tide measurement sites.

A wide range of real time and forecast alerts are generated for our different operational areas. These are used to manage risks such as coal dust, container roll, plant operational limits, safe marine pilotage, vessel mooring, infra-gravity wave vessel surging, dust from dry bulk unloading, and dry dock painting and abrasive blasting. Wave inputs also assist our understanding of sediment transport processes, of benefit to management of our annual maintenance dredging programme.