A major shallow earthquake occurred near Tonga at 3:27 this morning, New Zealand time.
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake was located 160 km north-east of Nuku’alofa, Tonga at a depth of approximately 16 km according to preliminary data supplied by the US Geological Survey.
A local tsunami was generated, but the tsunami warning for New Zealand coastal areas was withdrawn at 5:36 a.m.
Earthquake activity in parts of the South Pacific has again increased over the past week.
The US Geological Survey summary of earthquakes of magnitude 4 or greater shows that there was 1 earthquake near Vanuatu, with 5 near Tonga, 4 near Fiji, and 1 in the Kermadecs.
The beginning of a new month is a time when we analyse weather data for the past month and compare it with the same month in previous years.
This year, April featured flash floods in Dunedin, Auckland, Coromandel and Waikato so one would expect the media to wonder whether this was unusual for autumn rather than follow the nicely laid trail of media releases that followed the climate change debate. Once on the trail, it was easy for National Radio’s “Morning Report” to be led back into the global warming camp and feature interviews with protaganists in the climate change debate.