Mike's Minute: The economic damage caused by weather warnings

This is quite possibly from our "hopeless causes" file. But can I at least try and make the plea that we have a look at the economic damage done by trigger-happy weather offices and compliant clickbait media when it comes to storm warnings? Cyclone Vaianu was the latest and is hopefully still fresh enough in our memories to remind us of a week's worth of hyperbole and headline nonsense that actually caused quite a lot of damage. Not storm damage, but economic damage. Spending in Northland was down 48%. Auckland down 46%. Waikato down 52% (that would have included the Supercars that got canned). Bay of Plenty down 68%. Gisborne down 51%. Hawkes Bay down 56%. Now obviously in the middle of a storm on that blowy, old Saturday and into Sunday you have already worked out you're not booking an outdoor table for lunch. But these figures will include the week building up to the event, the drama that started the previous Sunday, with the ever-present "keep an eye on this one" headlines, and as the week progressed, the alarmism grew. Not because alarmism was required, but because the weather wonks and the media feed off each other. The weather people love publicity and the media, especially digital, love potential clickbait. And nothing baits your click like pending metrological carnage. So in that prior Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, how many things got cancelled? Bookings killed? Trips binned? Decisions altered? That’s the economic damage we can avoid. If you remember, it wasn’t until Friday they actually knew what the weather, they thought, would do. They were still wrong. But at least by Friday they had confidence in the ensuing days. When so much of our potential economic activity got canned, they were still speculating and blabbering on about trampolines and holiday travel and telling you how to live your life. Somewhere along the line the weather people got carried away with their own self-importance and the media gee'd them up and what is a two-day storm turned into a week-long extravaganza. An orgy of verbal diarrhoea, amping and amping and amping. And, as the data shows, doing untold damage to regions that didn’t really need it, as well as a storm. The forlorn hope? That this data sobers a few people up and maybe, just maybe, next time a few grown-ups drive the narrative.

You can listen to Mike's Minute: The economic damage caused by weather warnings online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Mike's Minute: The economic damage caused by weather warnings is an episode from The Mike Hosking Breakfast by NZME.

This episode is 2:29 long.

This episode was published on May 4, 2026.

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