Category Archives: Weather

Earliest Known Photograph of a New Zealand Tornado

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This is the true story behind what I suspect might be the earliest known photograph of a waterspout or tornado in New Zealand.  As I’ve stated many times before, every photo, postcard or piece of paper has a story to tell, however this one really will blow you away. Today’s story has everything – an extreme weather event, a windswept far-flung island, a budding pioneer botanist and a cavalry charge at the Battle of Waterloo.

Our story starts on the remote Chatham Islands on November 10th 1912.  A local sheep farmer looks across the bay and spies a peculiar funnel-shaped cloud forming at the base of a menacing bank of clouds.  This sheep farmer has survived a war, travelled the world and called this far-flung island home for nearly half a century but he has never witnessed anything like this.   The water beneath the funnel is whipped into a frenzy and starts reaching up to the heavens, meeting the funnel cloud and forming a violent waterspout.  It is followed by a second waterspout, and then unbelievably a third.

Our spectator fetches his camera and takes a photograph unlike any taken before in New Zealand.  The image he captures will travel the world, be reprinted in academic journals but alas, be all but forgotten for a century…

Triple Waterspouts, photographed off Chatham Islands, New Zealand 1912Lemuel Lyes Collection

Triple Waterspouts, photographed off Chatham Islands, New Zealand 1912
Lemuel Lyes Collection

This is a postcard copy of the photo that sheep-farmer took little over a one hundred years ago.  When I bought this example for my collection I had seen a couple of other copies of it on the marketplace so knew that while it wasn’t exceedingly rare it always fetched a high price – and no surprise really as this card is an absolute beauty!  It is one of my all time favourites.  The back of the image includes a handwritten note from a Chatham Island local.

Reverse side of 1912 Waterspouts PostcardLemuel Lyes Collection

Reverse side of 1912 Waterspouts Postcard
Lemuel Lyes Collection

“This is a photo taken of a water spout, it lasted for about 2 hours.  We can see where it was from our whare”.

Armed only with this postcard I set out to find as much as I possibly could about this extreme weather event and the farmer that took the photo.  Both are remarkable stories. Continue reading →

Snowball Fight in Jerusalem

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This evening a good friend of mine shared this beautiful photo of a snow-covered Dome of the Rock.  It is the first time in four years that snow has fallen in Jerusalem and it looks like the locals are enjoying the novelty.  According to this article it is the heaviest snowfall there since 1992.

To be honest I’d never really given the topic of Jerusalem’s snowfall statistics much thought except for a bit of a coincidence.  Earlier this evening I’d been looking through an album of photographs taken by a New Zealand serviceman in the Second World War when I came across this snap.

Kiwi Soldiers enjoying the snow in JerusalemLemuel Lyes Collection

Kiwi Soldiers enjoying the snow in Jerusalem – January 1942.
Lemuel Lyes Collection

Often when I find an album of old photographs in a second-hand bookstore or at an auction they are lacking provenance or any information to help identify the context.  I’m lucky that in this instance the original owner had written on the back of the photo.

“Here is snow in Jerusalem.  This was the heaviest fall for 25 years”

The rest of the album is all of New Zealanders at home and in the Middle East, so it seems likely that the snowball wielding figures in this snap are New Zealand soldiers.  Also if you look closely at one of the soldiers in the background you can see what is almost certainly the distinctive Kiwi lemon squeezer hat.

There was no date for the photo but after a bit of searching I found this article in a digitized newspaper collection at the National Library of Australia.

Cairns Post (Qld. : 1909 - 1954), Thursday 15 January 1942, page 1http://trove.nla.gov.au

Cairns Post (Qld. : 1909 – 1954), Thursday 15 January 1942, page 1
http://trove.nla.gov.au

Also this article here

The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Tuesday 6 January 1942, page 1http://trove.nla.gov.au

The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 – 1954), Tuesday 6 January 1942, page 1
http://trove.nla.gov.au

I love that digitized newspaper collections are making it easier to placate my insatiable appetite for historical trivia and am thoroughly amused by the concept of Australian soldiers having snowball fights with Arabs in Jerusalem.

I also found another amazing photo here on flickr of what looks like not just a snow fight but a FULL ON SNOW WAR!  I’m wondering if that photo was taken during the same snowfall.

it is funny how some human reactions never change.  I imagine that two thousand years ago Roman soldiers in Jerusalem would’ve dropped their weapons and thrown snowballs at each other just as eagerly as the Allied servicemen did in 1942 or as the locals are doing now in 2013.  Some simple pleasures are timeless.

© Lemuel Lyes

Opening of the Campbell Island Post Office

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A few months back I shared this post where I claimed that every envelope has a story to tell.  Well today I’m going to share another envelope with a completely different story, one that begins sixty years ago on a remote island at the bottom of the world.

Researching this envelope was a little easier than usual as I have a bit of insider knowledge but before I begin the story check it out in all its philatelic glory.

Campbell Island Commemorative Cover
Lemuel Lyes Collection

The printed message on the left-hand side of the cover seems pretty self-explanatory.  It was sent from the Campbell Island Post Office on its first day of business.  On the right you can see the orange portrait of King George the Sixth indicating that the postage cost tuppence.  The postmark indicates that this was indeed sent from Campbell Island.  The date isn’t immediately obvious but it reads 1 SP 52 12.  It was sent on 1st September 1952.

Situated in the Furious Fifties, Campbell Island is one of New Zealand’s Sub-Antarctic islands.  As you would expect of such a far-flung locale it has a fascinating history.  There are a lot of colourful stories I could share about Campbell Island but this one begins at the end of the Second World War – when the New Zealand Government established a permanent manned meteorological office on the island.  If New Zealanders wanted accurate weather forecasts then they needed a bunch of lively volunteers willing to live on an island at the bottom of the world. Continue reading →

Transit of Venus – In the Land of the Long White Cloud!

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Today is D-Day – the transit of Venus will be visible from New Zealand for the first time in 130 years.  If you get the chance then I urge you to get out and take a look as you won’t live to have another opportunity.  Just make sure that you don’t look directly at the sun (especially through binoculars or a telescope) without the proper protection.  Visit this site for a good write-up on techniques you can use to watch the transit or go along to your local observatory.  If the weather packs in then try watching it live online courtesy of NASA.

The transit of Venus has special historical significance to New Zealanders.  In 1769 the Royal Society sent none other than Captain Cook to the South Pacific to observe the transit of Venus.  But why go to all that effort to send him to such a distant part of the globe? Continue reading →

History on the Rocks

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History, the weather and the sea are all muses of mine – which is why this postcard is one of my favourites.  It shows stormy waves pounding Nelson’s Rocks Road, a scene that I’m very familiar with.

© Lemuel Lyes Collection

Nelson was founded in 1841 by the New Zealand Land Company and the coastline that would become Rocks Road was witness to some fantastic episodes of local history.  At the Tahunanui end it passes the largely forgotten site of the house of Henry Thompson, the Chief Magistrate of Nelson who would meet his end at the Wairau.  Further along it looks out to Fifeshire Rock, named after the settler’s ship that made an unscheduled stop there.  The road itself was carved out of the cliffs using the best means available to late 19th century engineers – explosives and convicts. Continue reading →