10th April 18, - Why was this not classified a Cyclone?

[KiwiWeather]

When is a cyclone not a cyclone? According to the Saffir–Simpson scale, last night was a Cat 2 Cyclone.
This was missed either intentionally or unintentionally.

[David]

Firstly it was not of tropical origin, and secondly that headline is just click bait IMO. How could it be equivalent to Cat 2? I never saw any reports of mean wind speeds equivalent to a Cat 2 storm. Would have been equivalent to Cat 1 strength in the Manukau Heads/Awhitu area but that area is known to be particularly exposed, and other areas didn't come anywhere near close to sustained winds of 120km/h.

[Cyclone Tracy]

In my opinion, the solution is very easy. MS should name strong mid latitude cold core cyclones that originate from polar origins, just like tropical origins now. UK met does this and very well. Once the criteria of 'amber' is reached, name it and everyone understands its serious. A new system is coming in for the U.S Hurricane season called CDP (cyclone damage potential) index rated from 1 to 10 to compliment the current scale which is also a very smart move forward in this area, as it rates damage potential a lot better than the current Saffir simpson scale.

MS did their job on this one but the seriousness of it's destructive potential gets lost in the pages of warnings and watches. IMO, give it a name and that all changes with the public and media alertness.

[spwill]

I know the National Weather Service in USA monitor the news media to make sure the right level of attention is being given to certain storms and warnings.

[Nev]

Quote from NIWA earlier this morn…

JUST CONFIRMED: our climate station (elevation 318 m) on the Sky Tower in Auckland recorded a peak gust of 146.16 km/h at 9:20 pm Tuesday.

A wind gust of this magnitude is typical of a category 2 tropical cyclone.

Not sure why last night's winds (or gusts) are even being compared to the US Hurricane Scale, as their scale is not only completely different to the BoM, Fiji Met and JMA TC Scales, but they're the only country that uses 1-minute mean winds (yet they use 10-minute mean winds for aviation to comply with international standards). Winds out at sea are also not subject to some of the local funnelling effects on land like those at the Manukua Heads (which incidentally would easily have been the equivalent of a Cat 3 on the BoM Scale, albeit very localised).

Re the NZ Herald headline, that doesn't seem to be directly related to MetService…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=12030182

Also looks like the low's centre 'made landfall' NW of Te Kuiti and exited around Tauranga...

[Razor]

The metservice are very interested in publicising a color code scale or similar to warn the public. Could be a very good idea, as long as the media don't overdo things

[NZstorm]

The comparison of a wind reading at the top of the sky tower and a cat 2 tropical cyclone is a useless piece of information.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

The metservice are very interested in publishing a colour code scale or similar to warn the public. Could be a very good idea, as long as the media don't overdo things.

That could be a good idea, but with this system, it seemed to be more nastier than what was predicted, especially over the mid to north North Island. I bet MS forecatsers are meeting to discuss this event and how to further predict such events. To me it did pan out to be different to what eventuated.
As far as the media goes......

[Nev]

Totally disagree John. MS were pretty much spot-on with forecasts of severe gusts to 120 km/h around Auckland. I was warning friends on the island at least a couple of days earlier to expect power-outages, ferry cancellations, etc. The problem seems to be with the media not taking MS's warnings, etc too seriously.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

I'm not complaining about MS forecasts, the warnings and watches were out ..but there was a lot of damage done and thankfully no lives were lost, but I thought, maybe MS could influence the media to be more aware of the event that happened. I know there are things on, which dominate the headlines, ie, the Commomwealth Games,politics and other issues that the media tend to favour, plus social issues.
Anyway, an example of people reluctant to weather forecasts:
A month or so ago, I was talking to a person here in Geraldine, who said "bugger it has just come onto rain and I've just put the washing out". I said, "Well, didn't you listen to the weather forecast?" She said. "I don't bother with that, they always get it wrong".
So that you have these factors to contend with.

[NZstorm]

Some people ignore weather warnings due to the false alarm rate. It's a world wide issue.

The National Weather Service in USA have tried to cut down on the amount of warnings they issue to alleviate this problem. For example the warning size for hail was lifted from 20mm to 25mm.