After Val had passed over the island, weakening upper-level winds caused the system to slow down before it made a sharp clockwise loop which almost brought it over Savaii for a second time.
On December 9, Val completed its loop and started to move eastwards and gradually weakened before it passed over American Samoa early the next day.
[3] During the opening days of December 1991, the Fiji Meteorological Service (FMS) started to monitor a small circulation, that had developed along the Intertropical Convergence Zone, just to the north of Tokelau as a result of a surge within the westerlies.
[4][7] Early on December 7, the FMS reported that the system had become a category 3 severe tropical cyclone, as it started to be steered southwards by upper-level northerlies.
[4][7] Later that day, the FMS reported that Val had reached its peak 10-minute sustained wind speeds of about 165 km/h (105 mph), which made it a category 4 severe tropical cyclone on the Australian scale.
[8][7][nb 1] After Val had passed over the island, weakening upper-level winds caused the system to slow down before it made a sharp clockwise loop which almost brought it over Savaii for a second time.
[8][6] During December 9, Val completed its loop and started to move eastwards and gradually weaken, before it passed over the American Samoan island of Tutuila early the next day.
[6][12] Storm force winds subsequently persisted around the centre of Val's extratropical remnants for the next 3 days, before the system was captured and sheared apart by strong environmental westerlies associated with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current as it approached 50°S.
[4][20] This had the impact of causing Samoan's to drop their guard, start clearing up, repairing houses and going about their day-to-day business, however, during that day the system completed a cyclonic loop just to the southwest of Savaii, which almost brought Val over the island for a second time.
[4] During December 6, the FMS issued a gale warning for the whole of Tokelau, before gale-force winds of up to 75 km/h (45 mph) were observed at Atafu, as Val passed about 370 km (230 mi) to the south-west of the island nation.
[4] Squally conditions subsequently persisted over the islands for the next few days, with Fakaofo recording gale-force winds during December 10, in association with a convective rainband.
[17][21] The United Nations Development Programme subsequently funded a project between 1992 and 1995, which provided a limited reconstruction of the areas damaged by the cyclone.
[4] During December 8, after the system had made landfall on Savaii, Val started to move south-westwards and posed another threat to northern Tonga.
[4] A storm warning was subsequently issued for Niuatoputapu during December 9, after Val had produced gale-force winds over the island and moved closer to it.
[4] However, gale- and storm-force winds were reported on the island during December 11, which were subsequently attributed to a convective rainband and rain squalls that appeared on satellite imagery at the time.
The assistance encouraged private, nonprofit organizations (NGOs) to meet and discuss expense-related emergency work and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged infrastructure.
[3] The revenues of American Samoa for the fiscal years 2002 and 2003, which had been showing a downward trend, registered a substantial increase attributed to the insurance settlement of claims made to cover the damages caused by Cyclone Val.
[28] As the system impacted the Samoan Islands, the New Zealand Government set up an emergency task force, to coordinate their response to the cyclone.