Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020

cyclone season?

Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea / Vanuatu

My brother is getting married in Vanuatu at the end of November, but I have just read the LP which says that November is the beginning of cyclone season and Vanuatu gets hit by '2-3 cyclones a year'?!! Is this right? Does this mean we are likely to be stuck in our hotel rooms for two weeks?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Cyclones come and go- they only hang around for about a day, not weeks. And with only 2-3 a year the odds are great that you will never be near one.

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Also remember that Vanuatu is actually fairly large, and a cyclone may not hit that close to you. I doubt it is something you really have to worry about. I think there's only been one bad cyclone there in the last several years. The "cyclone season" is from Nov to April, and tourists still go almost everywhere in the South Pacific. The main thing it affects is yacht travel, few yachts travel around the South Pacific between Nov untl thhe end of the following April.

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Depending on where you are staying they may have a cyclone shelter. The host where we stayed last time said that visitors who had been there during a cyclone had said that it was the highlight of their trip.

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