Tropical Storm Thirtyone became Tropical Cyclone Vaianu this morning. She’ll be arriving here in New Zealand in about five days. Hopefully, by then, she’ll have quieted down to a Tropical Storm again. We’re expecting gale force winds.
This is the first time we’ve used Google’s new DeepMind AI-based weather model. It’s specifically tuned for predicting cyclone tracks. We’ll see how accurate it is with this one.
We are back in Tauranga, finishing up some additional projects. This should be a good place to weather the storm.
Fortunately, she’ll give Fiji a pass. We have quite a few friends who left their boats there for cyclone season. That’s good news for everyone in Fiji.
Once a storm is numbered or named, our insurance policy changes our deductible for any claim related to this weather. Our deductible jumps up to 20% of the claim. It’s part of how these insurance companies cope with big, catastrophic losses that occur when a storm rolls through and piles up all the boats at the back of the harbor.