This photo gives an idea of the sheer size of TC Oma as it almost fills in the Coral Sea between New Caledonia and Australia.

Every year where we are located, we have a wet season and a dry season, the monsoon rains slowly make their way south from the equator and almost every year they bring a storm or two. Sometimes the storms are damaging and sometimes they are not, it is like most things in life, it's a lottery.

This time last week we were watching a strong tropical low-pressure system over near Vanuatu that eventually formed into a category 1 cyclone that was named by the Fiji Bureau of Meteorology "Oma". Oma was showing signs that it had the potential to intensify into a serious storm as it zigged and zagged between Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Oma was starting to show strong rotation but was not giving the forecasters any good information as to where it would head and for quite a while, they put us right in the firing line with a couple of weather models forecasting Oma would be a cat 3 or stronger by the time it reached us.

It was interesting to watch and record the four weather model forecasts that I was watching and eventually the fifth being our own Bureau of Meteorology as it tracked into our area of responsibility. They scared the you what out of us as they all agreed that it was heading this way, only to completely change the forecast the next morning.

I guess that is typical of most cyclones as they seem to have a mind of their own and go wherever they want to but this time the early forecasts were proven wrong and Oma stayed well out to sea, about 300 nautical miles out to sea but between Oma and a blocking Tasman high pressure system we did get about four days of strong wind but no rain.

That is enough excitement for us for this year, the weather is back to situation normal with 15 to 20 knot south easterly trade winds and nice clear days almost every day.

This is a short video that I put together that should give you an idea of the weather forecasts we were getting, sorry about the wind noise but I did say we received a few days of it.