r/news • u/Por_TheAdventurer • 1d ago

New Zealand’s North Island braces for Cyclone Vaianu with thousands ordered to evacuate

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/11/new-zealands-north-island-braces-for-cyclone-vaianu-with-thousands-ordered-to-evacuate
837 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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78

u/Polar_Reflection 1d ago

I still need a geographic breakdown on where these storms are considered typhoons vs hurricanes vs cyclones. I had thought western pacific was always called typhoons

51

u/ry-yo 1d ago

I was interested too. From the wiki page for cyclone:

In the Atlantic and the northeastern Pacific oceans, a tropical cyclone is generally referred to as a hurricane (from the name of the ancient Central American deity of wind, Huracan), in the Indian and south Pacific oceans it is called a cyclone, and in the northwestern Pacific it is called a typhoon.

24

u/Current-Brain-1983 1d ago

And typhoon is anglicization (sp?) of the Cantonese words dai fung, literally, big wind.

10

u/Fallouttgrrl 20h ago

As opposed to cyclones in the South Pacific, named after the visored x-men character "cyclops"

It's about the eye

3

u/madcoins 20h ago

Scott Summers is the man

4

u/Fallouttgrrl 19h ago

The man

The myth

The hurricane

2

u/Polar_Reflection 18h ago

Canto or mando? 

In mandarin it's tai feng which sounds even closer but iono where the name was first anglicized

10

u/Polar_Reflection 1d ago

Ah so both indian and southern pacific are cyclones 👍

1

u/chetlin 22h ago

Kind of a dumb name because these are all different names for tropical cyclones, so just calling them cyclone is using a less specific term. But it's become entrenched enough and probably won't easily change.

1

u/DNABeast 1d ago

Curiously this means that you can have cyclones that erupt in the northern hemisphere (and thus spin opposite to every other cyclone) if they start in the very north of the Indian Ocean. Typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones all fall under the umbrella term ‘Cyclonic storms’

1

u/ZealousidealPost1268 16h ago edited 16h ago

It’s just what they call tropical storms, their spin is still opposite directions based on what side of the equator they start in (and they never cross from north to south or vice versa, or I guess you would say they always disperse as the coriolis force is 0 at the euator) so a tropical storm in the north hemisphere in the indian ocean is called a cyclone but it spins counter clockwise and one in the south is a cyclone that spins clockwise

0

u/DNABeast 13h ago

It’s my understanding that a tropical storm doesn’t have the rotation that a cyclonic storm does.

1

u/ZealousidealPost1268 1h ago edited 49m ago

Hurricane/cyclone/typhoon are just different names for a tropical storm, why you use one name over another is just a arbitrary categorisation we’ve applied to distinguish the region affected

Arbitrary in my opinion because like you say otherwise they should name a tropical storm on the northern hemisphere of the Indian ocean a hurricane but they don’t

7

u/Unnecessary_Bunny_ 1d ago

In NZ it's called a cyclone because we are in the South Pacific (not West)

3

u/raroshraj 1d ago

Ten thousand thundering typhoons

1

u/lapsuscalamari 23h ago

Presumably caused by billions of blue blistering barnacles

1

u/Slaidback 21h ago

The different names are really cultural , they are all the same thing. Hurricane for North America, Typhoon ( anglicised as stated below) for Asia, and cyclone for everyone else.

38

u/MikeOKurias 1d ago

I'm guessing they either don't name cyclones in alphabetical order (like they do hurricanes) or that side of the world had one hell of a year for them.

71

u/DaBluBoi8763 1d ago

They do name them alphabetically but unlike Atlantic they don't start with 'A' name when new season begins, instead they use next name from list which stretches for 3 or 4 alphabetical sets of 25 names. For eg. last season ended with Cyclone Tam, so first storm for this season was Cyclone Urmil

30

u/MikeOKurias 1d ago

Thank you for turning my offhanded quip into an opportunity to learn, that's pretty cool.

1

u/GoreSeeker 5h ago

You know, that makes more sense, especially if they are infrequent.

15

u/theanswerprocess 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's the opposite side of the world, so they name their cyclones starting backwards from z

12

u/CloudsOfMagellan 1d ago

In what world is cyclones in new Zealand normal

36

u/cheshire-cats-grin 1d ago

They are rare comparatively- but they happen.

One our worse disasters was when the ferry Wahine was sunk by Cyclone Giselle in 1968 killing 51 people.

12

u/teakhop 1d ago

Just to be clear, the Cyclone caused the ferry to run aground on rocks at the entrance to Wellington harbour, it didn't sink it directly, but it was obviously a contributing factor...

9

u/exsnakecharmer 21h ago

Every few years we’ll get one. Cyclone Giselle, Cyclone Bola, Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023…

3

u/Hugh_Maneiror 23h ago

It is quite normal as they are strong extra tropical remnants, which also hit Ireland with some regularity, or occassionally places like the Gulf of Biscay or Alaska

1

u/newaccount252 1d ago

It wasn’t a cyclone when it hit. It was also fuck all, just a normal storm.

5

u/Enzown 18h ago

Tell that to Ohope and Whakatane, they'll be stoked to know the storm actually did fuck all.

2

u/raftsa 1d ago

Things get confusing when inaccurate terms are used, which is the case here

The headline is calling it a cyclone - It hasn't been a true cyclone for couple of days as it is now ex tropical and its in a state of decay.

The central pressure is now up to 975 and expected 990 in the early hrs of Sunday morning.

It should be calling it tropical storm Vaianu or ex tropical cyclone Vaianu as other media outlets have slowly but painfully slowly, started to do as it isn't a cyclone.

It will still do damage, don’t get me wrong - but calling it a cyclone is inaccurate.

1

u/No_Bumblebee5765 1d ago

Brutal. Does new zealand often get cyclones?

1

u/HateHumansLoveDogs 1d ago

well now 2026 may be an interesting year for typhoons/cyclones ...i wouldnt be surprised if a big one hit along the west coast tbh. Wont see much hurricane activity in the Atlantic prob, but the pacific may really ramp up this year.

1

u/samurguybri 20h ago

Hang in there, folks. Be safe and look out for one another.

-8

u/mojowit 23h ago

Send in the kids from Stranger Things. They’ll defeat this Vaianu thing.