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Cyclone Rene Hits Tonga
Monday, February 15, 2010



Courtesy of our friends at STUFF.co.nz - Winds gusting up to 170km an hour and waves of over five metres are currently lashing Tonga as Cyclone Rene hits.

The cyclone is now lashing the northern islands of Vava'u and Ha'apai.

Nadi Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre Alipeti Waqaicelua said the Category Four cyclone was not expected to leave until tomorrow night or early in the morning.

"As far as Tongans are concerned they would not be out of the woods until tomorrow morning," he said.


Mr Waqaicelua said they had been warning Tongans for a few days to prepare for the worst, shelter inside and avoid the coast.

The cyclone was expected to cause waves up to five metres between Samoa, Niue and Tonga or possibly even larger closer to the eye of the cyclone, he said.


Tongans went to church and prayed on Sunday as Tropical Cyclone Rene barreled toward their islands, threatening to intensify and directly hit the South Pacific nation.

After brushing past American Samoa and Samoa on Saturday without doing much damage, the powerful storm was moving southwest on a track that would take it across central and southern Tonga, Nadi Tropical Cyclone Centre forecaster Alipate Waqaicelua said.

"With this southward movement ... it's heading directly toward Tonga," said Waqaicelua. "If the centre goes right on (this track), then within 24 to 36 hours it will be very close to Tonga."

Tonga's meteorological office warned that the cyclone could "increase to very destructive hurricane force."

The storm missed both American Samoa and neighbouring island nation Samoa on Saturday, causing heavy rains, high winds and heavy sea swells but sparing more devastation to both areas, which were battered last year by a tsunami that killed 226 people.

Rene never made landfall on either American Samoa's main island of Tutuila or the Manu'a island group, but the government planned to conduct a damage assessment.

Emergency officials in the American Samoan capital of Pago Pago said there was one death indirectly caused by Rene - a 50-year-old man who died Friday after falling from a two-storey building while boarding it up to protect it from the storm.




Tropical Cyclone Rene spanned hundreds of kilometers over the Southern Pacific Ocean in mid-February 2010. On February 13, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that Rene had maximum sustained winds of 100 knots (185 kilometers per hour) and gusts up to 125 knots (230 kilometers per hour).
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