Storm warnings

It's not normal; it feels like there is no normal any more. It is all indivisible from global climate change.

- RUSSELL BROWN

We saw Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle coming. As I write, with the trees writhing outside the window, it’s more than a week since the Australian Bureau of Meteorology confirmed what the computer models had been indicating for several days and formally identified “developing tropical low 14U” in the Coral Sea, south of the Solomon Islands. Hours later, a report on WeatherWatch.co.nz was flagging the possibility of “more severe weather” for the upper North Island.

Within another day or two, there were forecast maps of the cyclone that was forming 3000km away, intensifying, tracking southeast, transforming into a different (but still bad) thing and taking a neat right turn to slam into Northland and Auckland. All the major weather modellers agreed that this would be the case.