Bobgram

Bob McDavitt's ideas for sailing around the South Pacific.
Disclaimer: Weather is a mix of pattern and chaos; these ideas are from the patterned world.
Compiled Sunday 28 December 2025
The top cyclones of 2025 included destructive typhoons in the West Pacific like Super Typhoon Ragasa (Nando) and Typhoon Fung-wong, causing massive damage in the Philippines and Asia, alongside the deadly Cyclone Ditwah in the Indian Ocean (Sri Lanka/India), and powerful hurricanes like Hurricane Melissa, making 2025 a very active year for intense storms across multiple basins.
Key Major Cyclones of 2025:
* Typhoon Ragasa (Nando): A destructive Super Typhoon hitting the Philippines, Taiwan, and South China, leading to significant damage and loss of life.
* Cyclone Ditwah: A catastrophic storm impacting Sri Lanka and South India with severe flooding and landslides, causing hundreds of fatalities.
* Hurricane Melissa: A rare Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, causing devastating impacts across the Caribbean, Jamaica, and Cuba.
* Typhoon Fung-wong (Uwan): An extremely large typhoon causing widespread flooding in the northern Philippines.
* Typhoon Halong: Reached Category 4 strength, affecting Japan and the Aleutians.
* Typhoon Kalmaegi (Tino): A powerful typhoon devastating central Philippines and later Vietnam, resulting in many deaths.
Other Notable Systems:
* Pacific: Super Typhoon Rasa was noted as potentially the strongest of the year early in September. Typhoon Matmo (Paolo) also brought extreme rainfall and significant losses to Southeast Asia.
* Atlantic: Hurricane Lorena, Hurricane Narda, and Hurricane Octave were among the systems in the Eastern Pacific, while Andrea, Barry, Chantal, and Dexter were early names for the Atlantic season.
Overall, 2025 saw intense tropical cyclone activity, particularly in the West Pacific and Indian Oceans, with numerous billion-dollar disasters and significant loss of life


A debrief of the Sydney-Hobart 2025:
The race started into a strong southerly and 4m head swells

Gruelling upwind sailing has forced the retirement of 33 yachts from the 128-strong starting field due to a range of issues, including sea sickness, injury, yacht damage and lost life rafts.

The final third of the race is being conducting in light and shifty winds as a HIGH moved across and to the east of Tasmania.

At one point this morning, Masterlock Comanche was in third place after sailing into a hole and becoming becalmed. LawConnect was doing major repairs to their mainsail and sorting out the end of their broken boom, and Scallywag took the lead.
It was nail biting and exhilarating all at the same time - instead of a drag race, we had an actual yacht race to watch!
Eventually Comanche climbed out of their dark hole and then clawed their way back into the lead winning line honours (first across the finish line) ....
Their official finish time was 2 days 5 hours 3 minutes 36 seconds - 21 hours outside the yachts own race record set in 2017 (as Andoo Comanche).

TROPICS
The latest cyclone activity report is at zoom.earth and tropic.ssec.wisc.edu and Tropical Cyclone Potential is from www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/tropical/tcfp.html

Cyclone GRANT has been travelling west across Indian Ocean for the past week. It had 44kt winds on Christmas Day near Coccus Keeling.


WEATHER ZONES
Weather Zones Mid-week GFS model showing isobars, winds, waves (purple), rain (red), MT (Monsoonal trough), STR (Subtropical Ridge), SPCZ (South Pacific Convergence Zone) CZ (Convergence Zone)

Rain accumulation this week from Windy.com

The South Pacific Convergence zone extends from Solomons to Cook Islands.
Several tropical lows L2, L3, L4 and L5 are expected this week.

Wind accumulation this week from Windy.com

The wind accumulation shows areas of wind around L1 fills much of the Tasman Sea and touches NE of North Island early this week.
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LOWS and HIGHS

An active phase of the MJO is spreading across northern Australia and into the Pacific this week....
Subtropical Low L1 is expected to be drawn into an upper cold pool in the Tasman Sea so should travels SW across Northland and Monday and then deepen in mid Tasman Sea for a few days and finally travel south over central NZ by end of the week. Avoid.
Highs H1 and H2 should stage themselves east and west of L1, with H2 finally traveling around southern NZ this weekend.
Tropical Low L2 is expected to form over Samoa and drift south over Niue and then weaken.
Tropical Low L3 may form briefly over Fiji area mid-week and then move off to the south and weaken
Tropical Low L4 is expected to bring intense rain to Mt Isa area next few days/.
Tropical low L5 is expected to bring rain clouds southwards across western Australia.
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Contact is bob@metbob.com or text 64277762212.
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