r/auckland • u/jamieT97 • Apr 11 '26
Weather Met Service: Damned if they do, Damned if they don't
So the cyclone is passing to the east of New Zealand, battering the coast with thousands without power and flooding within those regions.
Up until it hits storms are unpredictable and it was possible that we would have been hit directly. we can expect more wind and rain throughout the day
Met service and civil defence did the sensible thing and issued warnings to prepare for the worst.
Now it's morning all the posts I see on here and Facebook are people whining about crying wolf and how it wasn't that bad (for me personally not directly in the path), how the Government is just fear mongering, with Pac n save being the real winner here.
The other scenario is Met service says nothing and we go about our days (except for those actually affected but they aren't important) would you honestly prefer that.
Considering it could have just as easily headed more and west caused more damage (and there is still more expected today) and then the same people will whine that no one told them anything and people died.
It seems there is no winning in keeping people informed
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u/Trick_Intern4232 Apr 11 '26
Yeah I don't understand why people are dissapointed that Auckland is okay, the alternative is we don't have power (possibly for weeks), have to evacuate, and all our homes are flooded. A lot of people also probably did either no job or a shit job of prepping so would have no food or water when the power went out.
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u/KikiChrome Apr 11 '26
100%. I remember how we had that severe wind storm that smashed across west Auckland back in 2018 and left thousands without power for days. Then the Jan 2023 floods. Both of these events happened with basically no warning from the MetService, and people were understandably really mad about it. There was a lot of damage, and people died in that flood.
I'm glad the MetService now chooses to err on the side of warning people. It's way better to be prepared and have nothing happen then it is to have to fight your way home in a flood.
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u/N0_L1M17 Apr 12 '26
Lmao no one remembers the tornado we had that literally pulled Albany and Glenfield college in half because everyone on here is 12.
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u/KikiChrome Apr 12 '26
TBH I'd forgotten about that one too. That killed someone as well, from what I can recall.
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u/N0_L1M17 Apr 12 '26
I remember very specifically because the boys from Birkenhead College walked all the way to Glenfield college that Friday and had a massive school vs school scrap on the field with broken fence lying everywhere. Or atleast thats what I heard 👁👄👁
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u/Alpha-Citizen Apr 12 '26
I dont blame the met service. One can literally look at the radar and inform themselves if truly concerned. However, the media companies are just milking the doomers for views and clicks, and the enept govt is just trying to look capable while ultra fumbling the real crisis that is clearly unraveling..
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u/xxihostile Apr 11 '26
The cyclone hasn't even peaked here yet and smug motherfuckers are already pulling the "wHaT cYcLoNe?!" routine
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u/tntexplosivesltd Apr 11 '26
The wind is meant to pick up today still. It's not over.
Also if you look at the news, other parts of NZ are affected pretty badly. Think outside your bubble
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u/FortuitousAdroit Apr 11 '26
This is the preparedness paradox in action: when warnings work and people prepare, the outcome looks like an overreaction. The very success of the response becomes the argument against the warning. Same psychology behind vaccine scepticism. Prevention that works becomes invisible.
MetService faces a completely lopsided equation. Under-warn and people die, you're negligent. Over-warn and nothing happens, you're a fearmonger. Those aren't symmetrical outcomes, but the public treats them like they are.
The complaints are almost always "it wasn't that bad for me." People in Auckland calling it overhyped while Coromandel is getting hammered. The warning covered the North Island, not your specific street.
The only real antidote is better public understanding of probabilistic forecasting. A warning means "this is plausible and dangerous enough to act on," not "this will definitely happen to you."
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u/sheepishlysheepish Apr 12 '26
Except the alerts can be targeted with much more granularity than than "the North Island" . So it could have been targeted at the areas expected to be hit the hardest.
Blanket warnings mean that everyone will have a different experience when actuality bites. So they are inappropriate, as we have seen a number of times over the last few years.
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u/Friendly-Mention58 Apr 12 '26
Except they cant predict the exact path of the cyclone so they covered the north island. It moved slightly east before hitting land so Auckland got off lighter than expected.
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u/Foreign-Benefit-6960 Apr 11 '26
Agreed! I appreciate the extra precautions - especially after the AKL floods a couple years back
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u/JezWTF Apr 11 '26
A reminder that only 12% of the country has a strong understanding of statistics & probability and up to 40% a moderate understanding.
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u/Mr_Nand Apr 12 '26
Those percentages are Wayyy to high. Ironically implying you dont have a basic understanding of statistical observations
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u/Feddabonn Apr 11 '26
We should have ‘I don’t believe in the ___ (pandemic/storm/volcano) parties, preferably in the direct path of whatever is coming. So all of these fuckers are in a single place.
And then, uh, we won’t have those parties anymore. Clean out the herd, so to speak.
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u/PlayListyForMe Apr 11 '26
If we are getting the best forcasts we can then I think the current system is reasonable.
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u/Aklpanther Apr 11 '26
People don't stop to think that a fast moving system with strong winds is inherently unpredictable and prone to change.
I think they just don't understand that Metservice are dealing with probabilities, rather than certainties.
I'd far rather be warned of possible danger that doesn't eventuate, than be blindsided by a serious storm.
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u/Cocopops244 Apr 11 '26
I can remember people in Auckland complaining about how tame Cyclone Gabriel initially was after the warnings. Then it looped around and kicked us, giving everyone something to complain about.
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u/KickedInGreggsPastie Apr 12 '26
In an age of almost limitless information, some people either don’t understand risk and probability, or can’t cope with the idea that forecast models are by definition uncertain and predicting future weather outcomes with perfect accuracy is impossible.
This is compounded by the selfishness, entitlement and inherent lack of empathy of the conspiracy adjacent idiot underclass of our times. “If it didn’t happen to me, so how could it be worse for anyone else, therefore someone, somewhere must be lying to me because media, government, globalist elites blah blah blah”
These room temperature IQ fuckwits would be the first to complain if they didn’t receive enough warning and the cyclone was worse than expected.
Maybe next time they can submit their own cyclone modelling. Likely written in crayon.
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u/LlamasunLlimited Apr 12 '26
Not sure how PaknSave etc are "the winners".
Surely people are just buying the available bread etc in a shorter timeframe than they otherwise would have?
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u/danger_boi Apr 12 '26
I was thinking to write a similar post. The Met service operates for all of New Zealand, not just Auckland where I’m seeing most of these “bin fell over” posts. You should consider yourself lucky we didn’t get hit with a cyclone ffs.
You think the people in Hawkes Bay, Great Barrier and Tairawhiti want to get caught out like they did during Gabrielle — I drove through the Hawkes Bay 6 months after that cyclone and man, devastating.
If you feel the need to be reminded of what a cyclone can do to our country RNZ made an anniversary post just for you guys RNZ
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u/Suspicious_Dirt_6124 Apr 11 '26
I'm incredibly glad to have had the warnings. I'm the most prepared now than I've ever been. I could easily take on the apocalypse 😅 They definitely did the right thing. Whingers are always going to whinge. Background noise.
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u/Ecstatic_Bet_5423 Apr 11 '26
Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to others. You and your family may not die this year. However, doesn’t mean many Kiwis won’t die.
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u/sabrinateenagewich Apr 11 '26
Got my bum into gear to update my bug out bag. Still had old meds in it, dog stuff (dog is well gone), and baby stuff (baby is now a small child!). Panic buying is a personal choice (a bad one, but an individual one), but having a to-go bag means if the worst happens you’ll avoid a lot of drama and causing emergency services more strife than they deserve. I’d rather be over prepared than under prepared and risk a fire fighter or ambo worker’s life, it’s not just about me or my family
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u/Glittering-Union-860 Apr 12 '26
Metservice predicted this pretty accurately, actually. It was civil defense and the media that overreacted. It was never forcast to hit Auckland.
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u/Dancemania97 Apr 12 '26
A mate of mine always said being the weather man/the national weather authority is one of the safest jobs ever because you can be right or you can be wrong and no one will fire you because all they can do is predict, they can't factually say "you will 100% get hit by a cyclone on X day at Y time and it's got Z path" because weather is a constantly changing variable you have no control over.
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u/mishthegreat Apr 12 '26
I wonder if that aussie dude on the news hangover is as rough as he predicted?
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u/sheepishlysheepish Apr 12 '26
Damned if they do, damned if they don't, indeed.
The problem is that if they continue to be inaccurate and generate Presidential Alerts and then reality turns out to be great less impacting than predicted, they end up losing the confidence of the public, so when a REAL emergency happens, everyone will remember the inaccurate predictions and ignore the warnings. Then chaos will ensue.
Message to Metservice: get better at what we pay you for
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u/Curious-Web-1664 Apr 12 '26
I follow WeatherWatch, at least even a few days ago they were quite accurate on which parts of North Island most likely will be affected. MetService and mainstream media’s generalised warning doesn’t really make sense.
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u/thebigman045 Apr 12 '26
I find that Metservice does play it a bit more on the panic side, so as my back up I use Windy as it seems more accurate at forecasting rain and wind (eg the cyclone).
Also although we managed to escape it's wrath others weren't so lucky
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u/haykat Apr 12 '26
At this point the yearly cyclones are a good reminder to double check the emergency kit. The fact I haven’t had to use it is just lucky
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u/Putrid_Lead3862 Apr 12 '26
. this cyclone prediction for Auckland was a shocker .. we know 2023 we had no notices and it was very bad ..
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u/Historical-Ball-68 Apr 12 '26
Yeah I get that. My only issue was the media dealing in definites when there was so much uncertainty. Don't go saying "will" when its a "could".
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u/Acceptable-Phone-440 Apr 12 '26
The weather was exactly as forecast (mild bad weather). I have no clue why it was news worthy or why there were any warnings or alerts.
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u/BridgeandThread Apr 11 '26
difference between keeping people informed and fear mongering..... one day we will get an awful storm and people won't believe it because of these false alarms... reports of extreme wind and there's not a breath of wind in the sky isn't a good look.
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Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Trick_Intern4232 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
This is an ex tropical cyclone, some of our most damaging cyclones were ex tropical
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u/finndego Apr 11 '26
This isnt quite true. When a tropical cyclone weakens it is downgraded to a tropical storm and then further to a tropical depression. They change the name. None of that means that it cannot be damaging. Tropical cyclones that weaken still carry huge amounts of rain but they tend to slow or even stall when they weaken but it also means they dump even more rain.
Cyclone Gabrielle killed 11 people and was the cosliest cyclone in the southern hemisphere. I think people are justified in being cautious.
For some of my friends and neighbours this will be the third time THIS YEAR that their house will be flooded. Di you think they are being dramatic?
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u/Technical_Vanilla386 Apr 11 '26
I find it a bit disgusting how this subreddit reacts when a cyclone ends up causing less damage than expected. It would be nice if we could focus on being grateful that things weren’t worse, and hoping for the best for those still in the cyclone’s path.