A cyclone alert for Rotuma has been issued by the Fiji Meteorological Service.
The service is monitoring a tropical depression labelled TD12F which at 11am today was located about 160 km northwest of Rotuma.
Tropical Depression F circling off of Rotuma is expected to intensify into a cyclone within the next 6-24 hours. 8:51am Saturday 18-05-2019 Photo: Fiji Metservice
The system is now moving southeast at about 5km/hr towards Rotuma and is expected to intensify to a tropical cyclone in the next 6 to 24 hours.
On this track, the depression is expected to bring damaging gale force winds over Rotuma with sustained wind speeds up to 90 km/hr gusting to 130km/hr.
The metservice says its main concern for now is that mariners receive the message and heed the warnings.
All Rotumans are being urged to start their preparations to weather the storm and turn on their radios or seek out the latest information on the storm online.
The next update is due by mid afternoon.