Real-time coverage of severeStorms event on Pandita Data.
⛈️ OPEN LIVE 3D EARTHQUAKE MAPThe ocean is breathing fire.
It's March 24, 2026. Off the coast of Australia, a wall of cloud spirals counterclockwise into the sky—a wheel of wind and water 800 kilometres wide. Wind speeds claw at 185 kilometres per hour. The barometric pressure has dropped to 920 millibars. Tropical Cyclone 28P is not a storm. It is a engine. A heat engine built from warm water and atmospheric instability, now grinding toward the Queensland coast.
You are standing on a fishing vessel 200 kilometres offshore. The horizon has vanished. The air tastes of salt and electricity. The first rain bands arrive like shrapnel—horizontal sheets that strip the breath from your lungs. Your hands grip the railing. The sea, usually blue-green and rhythmic, has become grey chaos. Swells tower twelve metres high. And this is the outer band. The eye wall—where wind speeds exceed 200 km/h—is still two hours away.
This is Tropical Cyclone 28P. This is what happens when the ocean warms to 29°C and the atmosphere decides to organize that energy into a vortex that will change lives in an instant.
Tropical cyclones are nature's perfect storm engine. They require five ingredients: warm ocean water (at least 26.5°C), low atmospheric pressure, sufficient Coriolis force (which is why they don't form within 5° of the equator), atmospheric moisture, and low wind shear. When these conditions align, the ocean begins to evaporate. Rising air expands and cools. That water vapour condenses, releasing latent heat—energy so vast it can power a city for months.
But here is the critical detail: the storm itself intensifies this process. The pressure gradient tightens. Winds accelerate. More evaporation occurs. The system feeds on itself, a positive feedback loop that meteorologists call the wind-induced surface heat exchange (WISHE) mechanism. This is why 28P intensified from a tropical depression to a Category 3 cyclone in just 48 hours. The ocean was ready. The atmosphere was primed. The Coriolis force shaped it all into a rotating vortex.
Our real-time 3D weather simulations ingest live satellite data from the Bureau of Meteorology and NOAA's GOES satellites every 15 minutes. We track cloud-top temperatures (colder = higher, more intense convection), wind vectors derived from cloud motion analysis, and sea-surface temperature anomalies that feed the system. The simulation models atmospheric pressure gradients, precipitation rates, and storm track probability cones—the same forecast models used by emergency management agencies.
What you see in Pandita Data's weather module is the storm's structure rendered in real time: the spiral rainbands, the eye's rotation, the outflow aloft where air exhaust escapes poleward. This is not a forecast. This is the storm, as it happens, translated into data you can touch and understand.
Formation: Warm tropical oceans, typically between 10°N and 30°S latitude.
Energy: A single tropical cyclone releases energy equivalent to 10,000 atomic bombs per day.
Naming: Southern Hemisphere storms use letters (A, B, C…); this is the 28th named storm of the season.
Wind shear death: Most cyclones weaken when they move over cooler water or encounter strong upper-level winds that tear the system apart.
Rainfall hazard: Storm surge and inland flooding often cause more deaths than wind.