Bit of weather heading our way?

[aardvarkash10 1,105]

13 minutes ago, Fish said:

the govt changes it mind

the govt didn't change its mind.  Hopefully, apart from arranging funding and setting some broad objectives, the govt did nothing.

A number of departments overseen by ministries may well have done or not done stuff, including reassess the advice given on receiving more or clearer information.

But government doesn't manage the day to day operations of Civil Defence, Met Service, NIWA, or any of the agencies that might have had a hand in the announcements.

[Fish 0]

It was on the stuff live feed.

"No tsunami threat to NZ".

Giving this some thought, it is possible the statement was "no tsunami threat has been reported", which would have been technically correct, and would have been Stuff doing their usual misleading BS. That could possibly explain it.

 

[Fish 0]

Just now, aardvarkash10 said:

the govt didn't change its mind.  Hopefully, apart from arranging funding and setting some broad objectives, the govt did nothing.

A number of departments overseen by ministries may well have done or not done stuff, including reassess the advice given on receiving more or clearer information.

But government doesn't manage the day to day operations of Civil Defence, Met Service, NIWA, or any of the agencies that might have had a hand in the announcements.

Yeah, it is just easier to say 'govt' than list all of the disjointed CCO's State Enterprises and qausi govt departments.

I am more interested in Wheel's point, that the warning bouys up to the kermadecs aren't working. No mention in the media - surprised / not surprised.

[aardvarkash10 1,105]

1 minute ago, Fish said:

I am more interested in Wheel's point, that the warning bouys up to the kermadecs aren't working. No mention in the media - surprised / not surprised.

Is that the same media who misled you about the need for any warning?

Asking for a friend...

[aardvarkash10 1,105]

looks like two of the DART buoys are not operational atm.

Not a national secret apparently - its on the geonet website.

https://www.geonet.org.nz/tsunami/dart

[Black Panther 1,767]

This is not engineering.  There's a lot of guesswork and a lot of fallible human judgements.  And there's currently nothing better.  

Don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed. 

[darkside 69]

Have to be careful what you wish for.

My guess next time we have a tsunami alert no one will allowed within cooee of Tutukaka marina until all back to normal

[CarpeDiem 529]

1 hour ago, Fish said:

I am more interested in Wheel's point, that the warning bouys up to the kermadecs aren't working.

Someone said the shockwave was moving at 900km/h. If that's the case then GNS picked the threat up and alerted NEMA when it was over 1500km away.

So something clearly worked...

[Ex Machina 390]

Slightly off topic but I’m a bit perplexed at the loss of comms with Tonga. Sure the under sea cable is broke but surely they have SSB back up comms in the military and sat Phones ? 
 

[eruptn 105]

Bit of a provisional analysis here; https://www.geonet.org.nz/news/3UCRFvxEpqz7zpyeAemiuv

 

 

[CarpeDiem 529]

45 minutes ago, Ex Machina said:

Slightly off topic but I’m a bit perplexed at the loss of comms with Tonga. Sure the under sea cable is broke but surely they have SSB back up comms in the military and sat Phones ? 
 

The dust cloud is interfering with backup satellite communications.

Given we've had reports from the NZ High Commission and the occasional picture/news report, the country isn't completely cut off from the rest of the world. Just the general population is... 

[Fish 0]

1 hour ago, Ex Machina said:

Slightly off topic but I’m a bit perplexed at the loss of comms with Tonga. Sure the under sea cable is broke but surely they have SSB back up comms in the military and sat Phones ? 
 

Sounds like sat phones can't get through the ash cloud. NZRAF were saying they couldn't get data off their Orion today, and had to wait for it to get back to access the images. I'm assuming that is a sat comms issue, although, giving it some thought, it could be cause the Orions pre-date satellites... And they have to wait to develop the films they used in a dark room, or something like that.

One island had satellite comms links, as they did a Zoom meeting with a Labour minister. It wasn't Tongatapu. So it is likely the comms issues are affecting particular islands, and it just happens the main island is impacted.

Either that, or everyone is still hiding in the hills and not coming down to answer the phone. It must have been extremely scary seeing that size eruption go off in front of you. The gods are angry.

[Ex Machina 390]

Still it makes me wonder what NZs back up comms are with the outside world are if any ? SSB is a wonderful if archaic way of communicating long distance …and an aerial is much easier to repair than and undersea cable .

[Winter 42]

Satellite Station at warkworth is still operating.  We also have very diverse subsea links out both sides of the country. Kordia have several portable satellite kits and vans capable of data. NZ also has an active ham radio community many operators with global coverage from their back yards

[CarpeDiem 529]

1 hour ago, Ex Machina said:

Still it makes me wonder what NZs back up comms are with the outside world are if any ? SSB is a wonderful if archaic way of communicating long distance …and an aerial is much easier to repair than and undersea cable .

 

38 minutes ago, Winter said:

Satellite Station at warkworth is still operating.   Kordia have several portable satellite kits and vans capable of data. NZ also has an active ham radio community many operators with global coverage from their back yards

Radio signals, including Satellite and SSB/HAM frequencies are massively unreliable through volcanic ash cloud due to the electrical charge in the cloud.

NZ has 4 undersea cables, 2 on the east coast, Takapuna and Mangawhai, 2 on the west coast, Whenuapai and Raglan.  None of them could independently carry all of NZ's traffic requirements.  They are all privately owned and managed.

As a country we're 100% reliant on the North Island and private enterprise to keep us connected.  Two new cables are planned, one out of Takapuna and one out of Invercargill.

In a natural disaster nothing can be guaranteed, no amount of planning or preparation can prepare for every scenario.  There's always going to be a bit of luck involved.

[DrWatson 382]

Tuts even made the news in Zurich…

Feels slow getting support up to them…   (Tonga I mean)

[wheels 544]

Tonga has only one communications cable.
At present, there is damage to the main cable at the 37Km mark out from the Capital I believe. There could be a second point of damage, but I missed hearing the comment properly. But mention of 47? Kms was made, but I did not catch in what relation that was.
A Cable Ship was being made ready to leave PNG and head to Tonga. But it is going to be 2 or 3 weeks before repairs would be finished, providing the Cable is easily recovered. If it has been buried by a slip or debris or whatever, it will take longer. I have no idea how close to the Volcano the Cable is laid on the sea floor.
I don't know, but can only assume that between outlying Islands/Main Island, there would be smaller inter island communication cables.
Satellite Phone is being used for communication out of the capital by Gvt etc. But it is too expensive for everyday use by Citizens. The main issue when they say no communication, hasn't been with Tong's Main Island, but it's been all the outlying Islands. Nothing at all has been heard from them. In fact someone needs to get a boat and do the rounds of all the Islands, if that has not hapened or happening already.

[wheels 544]

20 hours ago, Fish said:

I am more interested in Wheel's point, that the warning bouys up to the kermadecs aren't working. No mention in the media - surprised / not surprised.

The person telling me made out it was far worse than it is. I suspect it was due to the fact that between us and Tonga, in a line along the Kermadec Trench, there are only a total of 5 Bouys. Of which 2 were not working.
There is a total fleet of 12 Bouys. As I said above, 5 are in a string between here and Tonga. 2 of that string are not working and they are the two closest to the Volcano.  Perhaps that eruption, re the Ash Cloud for instance, stopped the Bouys reporting. Just a guess. That leaves 3 working bouys between NZ and the Volcano and those 3 are fairly close to NZ. And because of that, those 3 would likely have had the greatest impact from the Cyclone. So I guess I understand why GNS was not sure what was coming. However, if they knew a Volcano had just spat it's dummy and Tonga reported a Wave, I would have expected someone to err on the side of caution and made a bolder statement of possible Tsunami threat, rather than err on the side of not wanting to alarm people.

[Adrianp 136]

Buoy location from that Geonet page:

[CarpeDiem 529]

6 hours ago, wheels said:

The person telling me made out it was far worse than it is. I suspect it was due to the fact that between us and Tonga, in a line along the Kermadec Trench, there are only a total of 5 Bouys. Of which 2 were not working.
There is a total fleet of 12 Bouys. As I said above, 5 are in a string between here and Tonga. 2 of that string are not working and they are the two closest to the Volcano.  Perhaps that eruption, re the Ash Cloud for instance, stopped the Bouys reporting. Just a guess. That leaves 3 working bouys between NZ and the Volcano and those 3 are fairly close to NZ. And because of that, those 3 would likely have had the greatest impact from the Cyclone. So I guess I understand why GNS was not sure what was coming. However, if they knew a Volcano had just spat it's dummy and Tonga reported a Wave, I would have expected someone to err on the side of caution and made a bolder statement of possible Tsunami threat, rather than err on the side of not wanting to alarm people.

The tsunami generating eruption occurred at 5:20pm - the first DART buoy (NZG) reported in at 5.48pm that something was happening.

Buoy NZG is the closest to the Tonga Volcano and it is operational.  NZH and NZI will both be north of the Volcano and are not yet operational.  NZH will be about as far away as NZG when it is deployed.

There was no delay on the technology side of the equation - everything worked as expected - any delay between 5:48pm and 8:15pm, when the Advisory was issued was human's trying to interpret the data and figure out wtf it all meant.