NZ Weather Forum

The eye is commencing to make the dreaded appearance on the Fiji composite radar loop.

Fiji Met now has Yasa at 899 hPa. More inner eyewall lightning. 29c sea surface temps are kicking in.

Cyclone Tracy wrote: ↑Thu 17/12/2020 08:03 Fiji Met now has Yasa at 899 hPa.

And 10-minute winds of 250 km/h - same as TC Pam in 2015 and TC Monica in 2006.

Mesovortices erupting with lightning on the southern area of the inner eyewall. Yasa is just as strong. I assume Fiji met are watching this as they have mentioned possible gusts of 350 km/h in a latest warning message.

Wow. Praying for Fiji, this is going to be terrible.

Very slight weakening today as Yasa interacts with Fiji's land areas…

Touchdown.

The Fijian Island of Vanua Levu is unfortunately getting smashed. Lots of land friction and interaction. Interesting to see how much that slows Yasa.

Less than 72 hours ago, only 2 main global models had a direct hit on that Island. UK and Access G Both use the unified model as their base.

Last image from Fiji's Labasa radar was at 7:50pm NZDT. However, its more southern Nausori radar suggests the centre of Yasa's eye made landfall on Vanua Levu's NW coast around 8:20pm NZDT.

Some pretty confronting images starting to hit social media sadly.

https://mobile.twitter.com/kkufijimusic ... 3D12409009

Yes, reports coming in of massive destruction and entire villages flattened…

Yasa downgraded to a Cat 4 by Fiji Met this morning (or Cat 3 according to JTWC), after completing an eyewall replacement cycle while crossing Vanua Levu last night. Increasing wind shear is weakening Yasa, currently leaving its LLCC exposed.

Sad news for Fiji . Horrific damage due to this storm.

Just for the record, Fiji Met declared Yasa extratropical on Sunday morning, after dropping to Cat 4 on Friday morning, Cat 3 a few hours later, Cat 2 on Saturday morning and Cat 1 early Saturday afternoon.


I've put together a few stats for this remarkable TC (based on satellite data from 1970):

• Yasa's lowest pressure of 899 hPa makes it the South Pacific basin's 4th most intense TC on record
  (after Winston's 884 hPa in 2016, Zoe's 890 hPa in 2002 and Pam's 896 hPa in 2015).

• Fiji Met's 10-minute mean winds of 250 km/h ties Yasa with Monica (2006) and Pam (2015) as the basin's 3 strongest TC's.

• JTWC's 1-minute mean winds of 260 km/h, however, only ranks Yasa as JTWC's 7th equal-strongest TC for the basin.

• Yasa is the earliest recorded Cat 5 TC to form for the season, beating TC Zoe's record in Dec 2002.

• Yasa and Winston (2016) are the only 2 TC's to ever make landfall on Fiji as Cat 5 TC's.