Bob Blog 22 Feb

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 22 Feb 2026

Climate change as seen by NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency, NZ)

That storm referred to in my edition last week triggered four states of
emergency in New Zealand. These are listed on the Civil Defence website at
civildefence.govt.nz/emergency-events/previous-emergencies/declared-states-o
f-emergency

Here is a plot of the states of emergency issued in NZ for the past 24 years

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-9.jpg
Last week I mentioned at storm in February 2004 -it triggered 5 states of
emergency

The storm we had last week triggered 4 states of emergency (1 more the day
after the above table was downloaded). The trend is obvious , especially
since 2019 .

TROPICS

HORACIO is now in mid-southern-Ocean a week after GEZANI.

After leaving 50 people dead while lashing northern Madagascar during the
previous week as one of the strongest on record in the region, Cyclone
Gezani regained force and brushed far southern Mozambique, knocking out
power and killing an additional four in flash floods and high winds.
Madagascar was spared a second strike as the still potent storm abruptly
veered southward just before reaching the island's southern coast

.WEATHER ZONES

This week we see a return to a more zonal flow south of 30S with HIGH H1 and
HIGH H2 traveling east along 40S as Lows L1 and L2 travel southeast between
the Highs. The trough and fronts attached to L2 are expected to cross NZ on
Thursday and Friday.


Wind accumulation from windy.com above shows the path of wind accompanying
L4.

For Australia, there is a monsoonal low L5 over central area bringing
widespread heavy rain to the interior and feeding moisture to rain clouds
along central east coast.

For the South Pacific, the SPCZ is rather weak and disjointed. Even so
tropica low L3 is expected to form between Vanuatu and Fiji mid -week and
then move off to the SE. Then L4 is expected to deepen near Vanuatu by
Friday. future uncertain. It may have damaging winds by this weekend. Avoid.

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