Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila Stalls in Solomon Sea, Threatening Solomon Islands and PNG

The fishing boats on Ranongga Island were never meant to sit this far inland.

By Monday morning, men and teenagers in Western Province of the Solomon Islands were still dragging wooden skiffs and fiberglass dinghies beyond the tree line, past houses already crusted with salt. For the third day in a row, a relentless swell chewed at the shoreline, tearing at sea walls and undercutting gardens of taro and bananas that feed the coastal villages.

Offshore, however, the sea’s tormentor appeared almost frozen in place. On satellite imagery from the Japanese Himawari spacecraft, Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila showed up as a nearly perfect spiral of cloud in the Solomon Sea, its eye wall pulsing but its position barely shifting over the weekend.

Maila, a rare Port Moresby–named storm and now a Category 3 severe tropical cyclone, has rapidly intensified while effectively stalled between the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. The storm is already damaging coastal communities and disrupting transport across the western Pacific. Forecasters say it is likely to strengthen further in the coming days and could turn toward Australia’s Cape York Peninsula later this week, though the track remains highly uncertain.

A rare and rapidly intensifying storm

Maila formed last week as a tropical low over the Solomon Sea. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology classified it as a tropical cyclone late on April 4, with 10-minute sustained winds of about 45 knots (85 kilometers per hour) and a central pressure of 987 hectopascals.

Over the next 24 to 36 hours, the system intensified quickly over waters of 29 to 30 degrees Celsius. Satellite-based analyses used by the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center show Maila’s winds climbing from roughly 40 to 50 knots to between 75 and 90 knots by late April 5 and early April 6, crossing the threshold into a severe tropical cyclone.

As of early Monday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated Maila’s maximum 1-minute sustained winds at about 85 knots (157 kph), while an aviation advisory from the Bureau of Meteorology put 10-minute sustained winds at 70 knots and the central pressure at 974 hectopascals. Under Australia’s scale, that makes Maila a Category 3 severe tropical cyclone, capable of “very destructive winds.”

Forecasters with several agencies say the storm’s environment – warm water, relatively low wind shear and good outflow aloft – could allow it to reach Category 4 strength within 24 to 48 hours if it remains over open water.

What makes Maila especially unusual is where it formed and how it is moving.

The storm was named by the Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, which has responsibility for a small slice of the Coral and Solomon seas. Maila is the first cyclone to carry a Port Moresby name since Cyclone Guba in 2007, a storm remembered in PNG for deadly flooding and landslides. After Guba, its name was retired and replaced on the list with “Maila.”

Since Friday, Maila has been meandering within a narrow box of the Solomon Sea, roughly between 8.8 and 9.7 degrees south and 154 to 156 degrees east, executing small loops rather than tracking steadily toward any coast. Meteorologists say the storm is trapped between a subtropical ridge to the southwest, centered over Australia, and a near-equatorial ridge to the north, creating weak and competing steering currents.

That slow movement, they warn, can be as dangerous as high winds.

Red alerts in the Solomons and PNG

The Solomon Islands Meteorological Service has issued impact-based tropical cyclone warnings, placing Western, Choiseul and Isabel provinces under a red alert and much of the rest of the country under an orange alert.

In a bulletin late Sunday, the service said Maila had reached Category 3 intensity and “continues to intensify” in the Solomon Sea near Western Province. At the time, the storm’s center was located several hundred kilometers southwest of Ranongga Island but had begun curving back toward the province.

The warning called for gale-force winds of 63 to 87 kph, heavy rain, thunderstorms and “dangerous swells of 3.5 to 6 meters” along exposed coastlines, with a risk of coastal flooding.

People in red-alert provinces were urged to listen to radio broadcasts, alert neighbors and vulnerable family members, secure property, and be prepared to move to higher ground if rivers rose. The advice for motorists was blunt: avoid crossing flooded rivers and water-covered bridges. For boats and ships, the service advised avoiding travel where possible and, if travel was unavoidable, informing others of the intended route and return time.

Local media in the Solomons have already reported seawalls being damaged and semi-permanent houses and boat sheds affected in parts of Western and Choiseul provinces. On Ranongga Island, residents described strong waves pushing small boats inland and destroying gardens of bananas and root crops, raising concerns about short-term food supplies if conditions persist.

In neighboring Papua New Guinea, the National Weather Service has issued tropical cyclone warnings for Milne Bay Province and Bougainville. An advisory on Sunday placed those regions under a Category 3 warning, naming islands including Woodlark, Sudest, Misima and Rossel among those at greatest risk.

Residents were told to stay away from the edge of the sea, prepare for storm surge and coastal inundation, and move to higher ground where possible.

Even beyond the immediate warning areas, the storm’s wider rain bands are affecting infrastructure. PNG’s National Airports Corporation said the runway at Tokua Airport, which serves East New Britain, was flooded and flights had been suspended because of heavy rain and runoff associated with the cyclonic system.

Australia’s far north watches and waits

For now, the most severe conditions remain hundreds of kilometers from the Australian mainland, but Maila has captured attention in Queensland and the Northern Territory just weeks after Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle crossed Cape York Peninsula and made two further landfalls in the Top End and Western Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a hurricane-force wind warning for high seas around Maila and is tracking the storm closely through its Brisbane and Darwin centers. A high-seas forecast late Sunday placed Maila at 966 hectopascals and warned of hurricane-force winds and very rough seas within several hundred nautical miles of the center, posing a serious hazard to shipping routes through the Solomon Sea and toward Torres Strait.

Coastal waters forecasts for North Queensland and Torres Strait currently describe moderate trade-wind conditions, with no direct cyclone-force impacts expected for at least several days. As of Monday, no land-based tropical cyclone watches or warnings had been issued for Queensland communities.

However, numerical weather models and the Bureau’s own forecast tracks suggest that, as the steering currents evolve later this week, Maila could begin moving southwest toward the Coral Sea and the far-north Queensland coast.

Speaking to Australian media on Monday, Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Helen Reid said the most likely scenario was for Maila to cross the coast somewhere on Cape York Peninsula over the weekend, but she stressed the uncertainty.

“It’s still jury’s out on this one,” she said, explaining that some model solutions brought the cyclone into Cape York, others curved it south toward the Cairns or Townsville region, and others kept it offshore. Depending on how long the system stays over warm water, it could still be a severe tropical cyclone if and when it reaches land.

Emergency management agencies in Queensland have urged residents in the far north not to wait for a firm landfall forecast before reviewing their cyclone plans, particularly in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that were affected by Narelle’s wind and flooding last month.

A preview of storms scientists worry about

While no formal attribution study has been carried out on Maila, climate scientists have been documenting two trends that resonate with the storm’s behavior: rapid intensification and slower storm motion.

In recent years, researchers have reported an increasing share of major tropical cyclones undergoing rapid intensification, defined as a jump of at least 30 knots (about 55 kph) in 24 hours. Warm ocean temperatures and high ocean heat content are key ingredients, along with favorable wind patterns aloft. Maila’s intensification over very warm Solomon Sea waters fits that pattern.

Separate analyses have found that the average forward speed of tropical cyclones has declined in several basins over the past few decades, leading to more “stalling” events where cyclones linger near one place for days. Though the reasons are still being studied, some scientists have suggested that changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation under climate change may be weakening steering winds in some regions.

Slow-moving storms can be particularly destructive, not just by prolonging high winds but by piling up more water along coasts and dumping extreme amounts of rain over river basins. For small island nations like the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, with many communities built close to the shoreline and limited high ground, that combination is especially dangerous.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that tropical cyclones are likely to become more intense and produce more rainfall in a warming world, even if their overall frequency does not increase. It also identifies small island developing states as among the most exposed to these hazards.

Maila is unfolding in that context, at a time when the southwest Pacific is already busy. Another system, Tropical Cyclone Vaianu, is churning north of Fiji, and a subtropical low is approaching New Zealand, prompting heavy rain and wind warnings there.

Testing early warning systems

The storm is also serving as a real-time test of how well early warning systems in the region can reach those at risk.

In the Solomons, the meteorological service has shifted in recent years toward impact-based warnings that translate wind speeds and rainfall into likely effects on people, infrastructure and the environment. Those messages are disseminated through national radio, community FM stations, and partners such as the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation and local newspapers.

However, technical challenges remain. At times, the service’s own website has displayed “no warnings current” even as bulletins were being read over the air, creating a potential gap for those relying on online updates. Many remote villages have intermittent electricity and limited internet access, increasing reliance on radio and word of mouth.

In Papua New Guinea, the National Weather Service coordinates closely with the country’s disaster management office, but similar communication hurdles exist across dispersed islands and mountainous terrain. In both countries, aid agencies have long warned that even when warnings get through, the ability of households to act – to reinforce homes, move inland, or evacuate altogether – is constrained by poverty, geography and limited infrastructure.

Internationally, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System have all flagged Maila as a storm with the potential for significant humanitarian impact in the Solomon Sea region, with tens of thousands of people in its current and projected wind footprint.

What comes next

Over the next several days, forecasters will be watching for signs that the steering pattern around Maila is changing – a subtle shift that could set the cyclone on a more decisive path, either away from major land areas or toward them.

For people in Western Province and Milne Bay, the concern is less about computer models and more about how many more tides the shoreline can withstand. Each new burst of gale-force winds and long-period swell chips away at sea walls built of rock and coral, gnaws at the footings of houses and contaminates garden plots with salt.

In far-north Queensland, where cyclone shutters have scarcely been taken down since Narelle, the storm remains, for now, a swirl on the horizon and a set of lines on a forecast map. Whether Maila ultimately reaches Cape York as a weakening tropical storm, a severe cyclone or not at all, it is already delivering a warning of a different kind.

The combination of rapid strengthening, stalled motion and multi-country exposure that characterizes Maila is the sort of pattern scientists expect to see more often in a warming climate. How well the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Australia weather this storm – and learn from it – will help determine how prepared they are for the storms to come.