DrJack RASP BLIPMAPs for New Zealand

1. North Island, north west of Hamilton
2. North Island, south east of Hamilton
3. South Island, north of the Rangitata river
4. South Island, south of the Rangitata river

Regional Atmospheric Soaring Prediction Boundary Layer Information Prediction maps is a specialized weather analysis tool intended for glider pilots. The tool that generates the maps was written by "Dr Jack", a meteorologist and glider pilot. This site however, is produced completely independently from DrJack.

Current conditions in NZ

NZ Holfuy weather stations and Zephyr show the current conditions.

Sponsors

Hosting costs sponsored by the New Zealand Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, the Matamata Soaring Centre, and the Omarama Soaring Centre. If your organization finds this resource useful, additonal sponsors welcome.

RASP contacts

The RASP.nz contact is Glen Ogilvie: email nelg@linuxsolutions.co.nz - ph: 021-684146. If you want to get involved, please join the google group where a bunch of us are collaborating on making rasp better and keeping it alive!

New developments

June 2, 2024

• Trying to move to part of the solution to Japan to save money. Also updated link

June 7, 2022

• Trying to move to part of the solution to Canada to save money, however it has caused an outage. I'm working on it. Glen.

July 31, 2022

• Fixed download from NOMADs by replacing curl on backend generation server with staticly compiled version to support TLS 1.3.
• Replaced cabundle with newer version

July 31, 2022

• Updated some backend server TLS libraries.
• Removed 2019 forecasts from archives.
• Pending: Added Te Mata Peak - as requested by HBHGPC.
• Pending: Added Inwoods - as requested by Tasman Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club.
• Patched front end webserver.

October 23, 2021

• Setup cloudfront CDN, with https and ipv6.

September 18, 2021

• Added Raglan, 3 Kings, Rocket Fire Hill and Totara North SkewT.

July 28, 2021

• Ran out of space so new forecasts stopped, 2018 forecasts archived to free up space.

March 28, 2021

• Fixed forecast generation.. confirmed working again. Thanks to the Rasp forum

March 23, 2021

• NOMADS-ftpprd (upsteam) have released a change today, which I think is causing rasp.nz to not generate any new forecasts. I expect to look into it over the next couple of days. - Glen

Jan 3, 2021

• Added Jake's skewt. Also Te Aroha tower and Ruru Tower

Oct 28, 2020

• The the upstream forcast service has been fixed.. rasp.nz forecasts should now be working again

Oct 25, 2020

• The the upstream forcast data sets are having a prolonged outage. They recently moved data centres (22/10) and have managed to break something. This results in rasp.nz not being able to generate forecasts. They have been working to resolve the issues, as this will be impacting others as well. It may be a day or two until they have fixed the problem.

Sep, 2020

• At present the upstream forcast data sets have had some outages recently. This results in rasp.nz not being able to generate forecasts. They have been working to resolve the issues, as this will be impacting others as well. They have managed to restore some services today (12 Sep), and are expecting other others back online by Monday.

Feb, 2020

• Global forecast source data has been delayed today (Feb 20, and was also delayed Feb 14). This causes rasp to not be able to generated forecasts at the scheduled time.

June, 2019

• 15/6/2019, The global forecast model was changed on 12/6/2019. We have made changes to the forecast download script so it can find the new location. This seems to have made the forecasts works agian. Confirmed OK 16/6/2019. Some forecasts missed between the 12th and 15th.

February, 2019

• 6/2/2019, Forecast generation because the upstream source has changed to https. Correct problem, a few forecasts were late. Back to normal now.

December, 2018

• Added some basic css styles to improve fonts
• Inactive weather stations removed
• Moved hosting provider and vairous server improvements
• Archived forecasts older than 2013 to tape

October, 2017

• Moving to http://rasp.nz domain name.

October, 2016

• Updated to Daylight Savings.
• Updated some links.

June, 2016

• Added soundings for Te Wera, Raetihi, Te Kuiti, and Boyd airstrips.

April, 2016

• Adding a sounding at Kawhatau strip on the North Island on request.
• Change back to standard time.

November, 2015

• Added soundings for Rangitaiki, Galatea, Tokoroa, and Wharepapa South airfields.

October, 2015

• Back to NZDT.
• Added soundings for Norfolk and Hawera Aerodromes on request.

March, 2015

• Added a sounding for Dunedin Airport on request.

January, 2015

• Fixed a breaking change to the names of the GFS source data by NOAA.
• Added a sounding for the Taumarunui Aerodrome on request.
• Finalised redirection code to the new hostname little-fluffy-clouds.com, please use that hostname in the future.

November, 2014

• Added the capability to center the wind graph of station observations on any compass direction, and changed both existing stations to be centred on N.
• Added more requested soundings: Hood Aerodrome, Masterton, and Paeroa range, NI.

November, 2013

• Some guys from the NZHGPA asked if their automated weather stations could log data to the site and have it graphed, so I added an Automated Weather Station Observations section to the page listing the forecasted days. As of right now only the North Island, south east of Hamilton region will have the link show up as that is where their stations are. If anybody else has some automated weather stations that you'd like to add just send me an email. I can create different graphs for different data etc.

October, 2013

• Funded for another year!

April, 2013

• Changed to winter time.

March, 2013

• Added requested new SkewT-LogP (a.k.a. "tephigrams") to the South Island forecasts.

October, 2012

• The forecast server has been paid for for another year - thanks to the New Zealand Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, the Matamata Soaring Centre, and the Omarama Soaring Centre, thank you so much!

May, 2012

• Removed the Hororata sounding from future forecasts, and changed the name of the Springfield sounding to reflect the Canterbury Gliding Club moving to their new field. Congratulations!

November, 2011

• Migrated to a new and more powerful server, sponsored by the New Zealand Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, the Matamata Soaring Centre, the Auckland Gliding Club, and the Taranaki Gliding Club - thanks DH and KE! This new server is more powerful so in time I should be able to increase the accuracy of the forecasts.
• Changed the order the forecasts run in so that the North Island is completed first, since they are the ones paying for the service.
• Changed to daylight savings time, sorry for it being late.
• Increased the number of days a "high" confidence forecast is archived to 5,000. I may have to tweak this in the future so please do still let me know if you want a forecast archived permanently, or it may one day disappear.

July, 2011

• Changed how long archived forecasts are kept. "High" confidence forecasts are now kept for 400 days before they are deleted, while "above average" and "average" ones are only kept for 30 days.

April, 2011

• There was a problem with the first days in April, which I believe has now been fixed.

March, 2011

• Enabled the Cumulus Potential and OverDevelopment Potential forecasts by request.

January, 2011

• Added soundings for the airports at Christchurch (NZCH), Ashburton (NZAS), Hokitika (NZHK), Taupo (NZAP), and Whangarei (NZWR).
• Minor website tweaks.

November, 2010

• Migrated the website to the new web server. If you see this message then you are using the new server. Again, do let me know if anything is broken please!
• The webserver is currently having the occasional hiccup which can cause new forecasts to not be made available. The webserver is therefore going to be migrated to the new server in the next couple of days - this should fix the problem.
• Have been doing the occasional tweak to some pages.
• Was sent a link to a discussion on the Auckland HG and PG forum that compared RASP to reality.
• Another RASP admin made a Google Map showing all the known RASP installations in the world, it's pretty cool.

September, October 2010

• Added a simple page header graphic of an awesome image of lenticulars over Big Ben in Omarama, courtesy of my friend Oliver.
• Thanks to DH at the Matamata Soaring Centre, and KE from the New Zealand Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, I now have RASP running on its very own dedicated server. This means all the regions are back to high-resolution forecasts, and there are more time-slots for the forecasts:
  • one finishes very early morning for the current day
  • one finishes around noon for the day after tomorrow
  • one finishes around 6pm for tomorrow
  As there have been some significant code changes to support this, it is possible some things may not work properly - please do let me know if that is the case!

July 2010

• The place markers on the maps now have a dot showing the location.

June 2010

• Fixed a PHP deprecation warning.

May 2010

• Changed the forecast times back to winter time (NZST). A bit late, I know...

March 2010

• Have re-enabled all regions, but now only the northern South Island is high resolution. Note that the low resolution regions will not show wave.
• Have disabled the atmospheric cross section plots, I don't think they were that useful.

February 2010

• Have temporarily re-enabled the central North Island region for the GNZ Nationals, and have made the two South Island regions lower resolution for the duration.

January 2010

• Have temporarily re-enabled the North Island forecasts while there is a gliding competition in Drury.
• Have unfortunately had to stop the North Island forecasts again, but I am working on a solution.
• Removed a lot of forecast types that were not that interesting or useful to save on space and bandwidth.
• Changed the timezone to be NZDT like it should, and added more forecast hours.

September 2009

• Switched the RASP data source to use the new NOAA NOMAD high-availability cluster. This means that RASP should be significantly more reliable from now on.
• We think the server problems are now fixed (turned out to be software) so RASP is running for the South Island again.
• RASP is unfortunately turned off at the moment while we investigate what seems to be a hardware error on the server. Because RASP needs so much server resources it is unfortunately the thing that makes the server fall over and die. Hopefully we will figure out what the problem is soon so that we can fix it, at which point I'll reenable RASP forecasts for the South Island.

July 2009

• RASP has been turned off for a while, it was just taking too much processing time on the server. I've now re-enabled it for the South Island only (since that is where I am). Sorry about that North Islanders, in 9 months or so the server will probably be replaced with a beefier one if nobody volunteers a server I can use.

April 2009

• Added the region map on the front page.
• Tweaked a bunch of the other plots to give them fixed colours. Much better now.
• Tweaked the rain forecast scale, and ended up making the scale fixed for thermal updraft (and derivatives), CAPE, and upper level vertical velocity. It is now much easier to view these using the Image Browser mode.
• Added rain forecasts.
• Added some missing forecasts to the central north island region.

March 2009

• Added this New Developments log you're reading and tried to remember all the work I've done on RASP this year.
• Added some help text for soundings, including a PDF document written by Dr Ian M. Brooks at the University of Leeds.
• Added an "Image browser" to make it easier to view all the times of a particular plot in a convenient way by just moving the mouse pointer over the time you want to see.
• Changed forecasts to be hourly. A full days forecast for all the four regions now take between 280-350 megs; about 10 gigs per month.
• The plot type, date and time is now displayed in the browser title bar and at the top of each plot page.
• Did some behind-the-scene refactoring of code. The website is now approaching 1,000 lines written in 28 files.
• Upgraded to the latest RASP code, after DrJack fixed a serious bug.

February 2009

• Added sounding and cross-section for Queenstown. Other sites can be added on request.

January 2009

• Archived forecasts are now permanently deleted after 3 months. It is possible to mark days to not be deleted on request.

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk. Do not use for protection of life or property. No liability is accepted for the use of this website in any way.