Fiji battens down as severe cyclone Winston nears

It’s forecast to make landfall on the island of Fiji in about 24 hours, the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre said.

Flights in and out of Fiji have been cancelled as a Category 5 cyclone bears down on the South Pacific nation, a popular tourist destination for Australian holidaymakers. Despite weakening to a tropical storm as it did so Winston brought heavy rain to parts of Tonga earlier this week.

MetService meteorologist Lisa Murray said the centre of Cyclone Winston is situated between the country’s two main islands. The cyclone passed Tonga’s island of Vava’u once earlier this week as a category 2, and then strengthened, turned and passed over the same islands again as a category 4.

Tracking map for Tropical cyclone Winston. On Friday, Winston was given an eight.

John Allen, an associate research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, said while it’s hard to attribute Winston’s Category-5 level strength and longevity directly to El Niño, it certainly fits a pattern of what you would expect in an El Niño year. Meanwhile, New Zealand has already pledged $39,000 to help Tonga in the wake of the storm.

Winston is forecast to hit the capital, Suva, late on Saturday. Before that, we have to look to 1990, when Cyclone Sina passed to the south as a Category 3 on the Australian scale. According to a database maintained by NOAA’s Coastal Service Center, Evan was the strongest tropical cyclone on record to affect Fiji’s main island, with records going back to 1941 (however, accurate satellite records extend back to only about 1990.) Evan did $109 million in damage (2012 dollars) to Fiji, making it the second most destructive storm in their history.

(CNN)Fiji is bracing for a direct hit from a massive tropical cyclone, which will move over the main islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu this weekend.

“This system has destructive hurricane force winds and when we compare with Cyclone Pam it had similar winds, and the massive destruction that was caused with Pam…we can expect the damages in its path will be quite extensive”, he says.

It’s moving west at around 25kmh, and at its centre the cyclone is estimated to have winds of 220kmh and gusts of 315kmh.