By Emma Blades, Meteorologist

Please note all times are in New Zealand local time.

By Emma Blades, Meteorologist

Tropical Cyclone Tuni was located 270km south of Samoa today at 1pm (New Zealand local time). It remains a category one cyclone, although the central pressure has deepened slightly in the past six hours to 991hPa. Winds close to the centre are still expected to be a sustained 75kph.

By Emma Blades, Meteorologist Tropical depression TD03F was upgraded to a category one cyclone yesterday evening and named Tropical Cyclone (TC) Tuni by the Fiji Met Service. On Saturday evening TC Tuni passed to the southwest of Samoa. Radio New Zealand reported that Samoa had been battered by torrential rain on Saturday evening with reports of flash flooding across the island of Savai’i. At 7.00am this morning (New Zealand local time), TC Tuni had a central pressure of 993hPa and was positioned 160km southwest of Samoa.

By Emma Blades, MetService Meteorologist

A tropical depression, identified as TD03F, is gradually deepening near Samoa and could be upgraded to a tropical cyclone later today. You can see the location of TD03F at 11am 28 November 2015 in the infrared satellite image below.

There’s been a lot in the news in recent months about El Niño. See, for example, the latest monthly outlook, and an ABC news story. Here’s a ‘back-to-basics’ description of El Niño. To start, the chart below shows a climatological average of air pressure at Mean Sea Level over the central and South Pacific.

The Auckland forecast for Monday 12 October included mention of the following: '... isolated showers ...' and ' ... southwesterly winds ...'. From time to time you’ll hear the word 'isolated' in weather forecasts, so let’s see what it means with reference to observational data, some of which is available on www.metservice.com.

The Japan Meteorological Agency recently launched a new geostationary weather satellite called Himawari-8. “Himawari” means sunflower, and the name has been given to a new series of satellites that we can look forward to in coming years. “Geostationary” means the satellite rotates “in sync” with the Earth, always above the same point over the equator. We, in New Zealand, are now starting to receive early data from this satellite.

Have you ever thought that for aeroplane pilots, every day at work is a blue-sky day? Soaring above the clouds you might think that the weather isn’t such a big deal. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Pilots are dependent on weather information at every stage in their flights. In this blog post, we discuss one crucial aspect of aviation weather that affects both pilots and passengers – turbulence.

The nature of turbulence

Tropical Cyclone Raquel was named at 6am on 1 July 2015, located at 5.8° South 159.3° East, some 410km north-northwest of Honiara, the Capital of the Solomon Islands. The maximum winds near the centre were estimated at 35 knots (65km/h). Whilst the consensus of computer models suggest Raquel will track slowly southwest over the Solomon Islands during Thursday and Friday, some models move the system towards the southeast, possibly affecting Vanuatu and/or New Caledonia in the coming days.