Nature imitates art - flash freeze - last week in New Zealand

[Divernan]

Remember the 2004 apocalyptic film, The Day After Tomorrow? Particularly the flash freezing which occurred as temperatures dropped instantaneously? Well, such a phenomena, albeit on a smaller scale, was observed in New Zealand last week.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11471594 (Friday Jun 26, 2015)
Flights in and out of Queenstown Airport were on hold this morning due to ice on the runway, in a "never seen before" snap freeze.

"The feedback we had from the rescue fire guys who do this inspection work was they have never seen anything like this before.

"We basically had rain first up, the rain stopped and then suddenly Queenstown was snap frozen. All that water on the runway and the roads just turned to ice."

This morning road users in Otago were also warned of severe black ice across several roads in the area.

A new weather phenomena to file away for future reference. Damned lucky a plane was not in the midst of landing when this occurred.

[Nihil]

1. Agree with your last sentence ...

> Damned lucky a plane was not in the midst of landing when this occurred.