This is Newswire’s cyclone tracker for New Zealand and the South Pacific. When a tropical cyclone forms anywhere in our coverage area, from the Coral Sea across Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga, a live tracker page for that storm is created automatically and listed below, usually within two hours of the system being named. Between storms, the live maps on this page are always watching.
Checking for active storms…
Watch the whole cyclone basin live
The wind map below covers the entire zone where our cyclones are born and the paths they take toward New Zealand. A cyclone appears as a tight, brightly coloured spiral. Drag the timeline to fly up to five days ahead.
And this is the same sky photographed from space, updated every 10 minutes by the Himawari-9 satellite. Yellow through red marks the coldest, most vigorous storm tops.
When cyclone season runs
The South Pacific tropical cyclone season officially runs from November to April, peaking between January and March. On average around nine tropical cyclones form in the basin each season, and roughly one ex-tropical system passes within 550 km of New Zealand each year, most often in February and March. Outside the season the tropics are usually quiet, but the maps above never stop watching.
How cyclones form and reach New Zealand
Tropical cyclones need sea surface temperatures above about 26.5 degrees and enough distance from the equator for the Earth’s rotation to set them spinning. Warm moist air spirals inward and upward, condensation releases heat, and a self-feeding engine forms around a calm eye. Most that head our way weaken over cooler water and are reclassified as ex-tropical on the journey south, but that label is misleading. They trade their compact fury for sheer size, and some of New Zealand’s worst weather disasters, from the 1968 Giselle storm that sank the Wahine to Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, arrived as ex-tropical systems. The full story of how these storms work is on our wind map page.
What happens when a storm forms
The moment a tropical cyclone is named inside our coverage area, this site builds its tracker page automatically. The page carries the storm’s live position and strength from official advisories, the wind map with its five day forecast, and the satellite view updating every 10 minutes. While the storm lives, our collectors quietly preserve its wind analyses and satellite imagery. When it dies, the page becomes the permanent record, with full replays of the storm’s actual wind and cloud, and it stays listed on this page for good.
Official warnings
These pages are information tools, not a warning service. Official watches and warnings come from MetService, tropical cyclone advisories for the South Pacific come from the Fiji Meteorological Service, and emergency instructions come from NEMA and your local Civil Defence group.