5 PG Pilots and a PG groupie attended "Understanding the Weather" run by Hagley Community College.

An 8 week course at Hagley Community College presented by Paul Frost. 2 hours per night.

Clouds, precipitation, fog, visibility, thunderstorms

Identifying and recording basic weather elements

Topography

Air masses, fronts, monsoon and El Nino

Droughts, floods, tropical cyclones and other storms

Upper air influences

Radiation, heat transfer, density changes, pressure changes, wind, moisture and stability

Weather on the net

Employed by the NZ Meterological Service for 20 years, Paul was a weather forecaster for 9 years. He has extensive experience in aviation, tropical and general forecasting and has taught meteorology to aviation students, the military and marine organizations.

Good interaction and chance to ask specifics on what interested you. Related to what was going on with weather day to day so you could ask why things happened, and have a go at predicting for yourself. (Would've got more out of this if I'd actually done the 'homework'.) Sometimes assumed you knew the basics, but explanations given if you didn't mind looking ignorant by asking. Excellent to understand some micro/localised conditions that you wouldn't expect from looking at the forecasts in the paper. All in all a valuable course, but content driven very much by what people want to know - so be sure to ask stuff.

Good general/synoptic weather stuff, good how to use/read maps and what you can expect to happen (vaguely) in the day or two, not really much in terms of on the hill 'I can see clouds that look like that, what does that mean', and really good stuff about local effects -foehn wind stuff and Canterbury wind things. And of course, he has really cool mad scientist/meteorologist hair - worth the price. :).

Excellent course and great value for $30. Plenty of broad scale general information, but the most valuable stuff for me was about what goes on in the Canterbury area and over the South Island.

Worthwhile for an introduction to interpreting the changing weather conditions on a daily basis. At $30 for 8 weeks, 2 hours per week, it's not bad value.

A few local pilots fronted up for the course recently and I'm sure all of us had mixed opinions of the course itself. For me anyway.... I found the teacher is enthusiastic but can sometimes teach at a level above comprehension (mine anyway). He is happy to get feedback along the way and will change his level if you are struggling. Everything is very informal and most classes were run along the lines of lots of questions and teacher answering. It's good for introducing you to some new weather web sites."

"Please ask me some curly weather questions on the hill!!" says Jill Borst.