Twin tropical cyclones are ravaging Melanesia, with Maila stirring up trouble in the Solomon Sea and Vaianu darting across the South Pacific.
Both are category three systems with the potential to bring wild weather to Australia and New Zealand by week’s end.
Category three denotes a severe cyclone with destructive winds averaging between 118 and 157 kilometres per hour.
As of Tuesday morning, Vaianu was causing the most destruction, to the west of Fiji, but with a tail bringing storms and rain to the main island of Viti Levu.
It is not predicted to make landfall, but instead travel south, meaning the worst of the storms will hit Fiji on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Maila has largely stayed still, brewing for several days in the warm waters between Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
“It’s not going to move much for the next couple of days, it’s like a wheel stuck in mud,” said WeatherWatch head forecaster Philip Duncan.
Models suggest it will move west towards the end of the week and track over Queensland north of Cooktown near the vicinity where Narelle made landfall in March.
At that point, the cyclone may ease and be downgraded as a tropical low.
On Tuesday, posts by the Fiji Meteorological Service showed Vaianu bringing flooding to Nadi, the tourism hotspot and home to the region’s biggest airport.
Duncan said the system was moving south at pace, keeping out of the way of Tonga, and was likely to then impact New Zealand.
“The storm curves around … and that means it’s getting pretty confident now this storm is going to come into New Zealand this weekend,” he said.
“The computer modelling has been aligned now for a couple of days.”
Some models suggest the storm will hit the North Island near Auckland or Tauranga around Sunday.
Duncan said it could bring similar intensity to Cyclone Gabrielle, which hit in 2023, killing a dozen people and costing billions of dollars, mostly in lost agricultural exports and infrastructure.
“European modelling showed 969 hectopascals. That is very low air pressure. Cyclone Gabrielle was 965,” he said.
