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 22 Feb 2026
A review of last month's weather
Here is a link to a YouTube clip giving an animated loop of the isobars and
streamlines
For the month of January is at youtu.be/dF205bOjbXI
New Zealand had damaging weather on 14 to 16 February.

The 500hPa heights and anomalies shows that prolonged upper low over Tasman
sea late in the month
From http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z500_sh_anim.shtml

Sea Surface temperature anomalies from psl.noaa.gov/map/clim/sst.shtml
The waters over eastern equatorial Pacific are now near normal.
The warm patch between Tonga and New Zealand is relaxing.
The cool (dry) zone in the mid Indian Ocean is moving onto western
Australia.

Average isobars for past month (below)
From http://www.psl.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/slp_30b.fnl.html
Apart from that deep depression over New Zealand during mid February, the
remainder of the month was close to average. Overall the monthly isobars
show a return of the subtropical ridge to normalcy.
The low pressure band over the Aleutian Islands has also relaxed.


Pressure anomalies for past month (below)
From https://www.psl.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/slp_30b.fnl.html
The anomaly pressure pattern for last month shows a weakening of the
negative anomalies over Australia and New Zealand. Also the replacement of
Highs between Australia and Antarctica with lows.
The 1015 isobar has reurned to the Tasman Sea.





TROPICS
URMIL is now south of Fiji and moving off to the southeast. The area of
high potential placed over the South Atlantic looks to be an erroneous
artifact.
Cyclone Horacio underwent unprecedented intensification in the Indian Ocean
while narrowly missing the island of Rodrigues. It went from a tropical
storm to a Category-5 cyclone in less than 24 hours, producing sustained
winds of 161 mph as the year's most intense storm so far.

WEATHER ZONES

The remains of URMIL (or L1) are expected to continue SE and then south
whilst a cold front and southerly change spread north on Monday forming L2
east of North Island by mid-week and the L1 and L2 should move off to the
east.

High H1 is then expected to travel northeast then east across New Zealand,
whilst High H2 travels east across the Aussie Bight.

In the tropics further lows are expected to form. L3 may move from Coral
Sea onto Cairns late this week. Low L4 may move to southwest off the
northwest end of Australia.

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