The South Pacific tonight has twins – twin cyclones which were born only hours apart. This evening Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology upgraded the tropical low in the Coral Sea, to the northwest of New Zealand, to a Tropical Cyclone – and it’s been named ‘Tatiana’.

Today Fiji forecasters also named a new cyclone a little further east ‘Winston’.

Tonight Tropical Cyclone Tatiana is a Category 1 storm with winds sustained at gale force and gusting higher. Tatiana isn’t expected to remain a cyclone for too long – and most likely a shorter time than Cyclone Winston which is over better conditions for intensifying.

This evening Cyclone Winston lies east of Vanuatu while Cyclone Tatiana remains well east of Queensland, 1000kms off the Queensland Coast and tracking further away towards New Caledonia and New Zealand direction to the south east.

WeatherWatch.co.nz will have more details on Friday about what we expect to happen next week – both storms are likely to lose their cyclone status well before New Zealand – but it’s also looking quite likely both systems will have significant impacts on beach and marine conditions across many parts of New Zealand, and then may well help affect the entire weather pattern around the country as the week goes on.  Watch this space basically.

Check back on Friday for our updates.  

– Image courtesy Bureau of Meteorology

– WeatherWatch.co.nz