NZ update from here in Auckland, outer rainbands sweeping through again this morning with a decent north westerly flow. South Island getting smashed down around Canterbury. Sat pic shows the true size of the storm, basically covers NZ.
Interestingly for me is that EC accurately showed this monster a fair way out but the NZ MetService downplayed it until about 48 hours ago when Access R and new GFS started producing the enormous bombing cyclonic gyre. State of Emergenices in many regions, with army intervention for rescues, now shows they underestimated this baby. The big Antarctic temp leak into a sub tropical feed = a mid latitude Goliath.
I see the temps in Antarctica are dropping again and the tropics are warmer than usual....with a decent polar Jet stream south of Africa, something to keep any eye on