Within the basin, most tropical cyclones have their origins within the South Pacific Convergence Zone or within the Northern Australian monsoon trough, both of which form an extensive area of cloudiness and are dominant features of the season.
[2] When Europeans started to settle and colonise the South Pacific, they realised that the region was not free of hurricanes and were the first to publish accounts about the systems.
[2] During 1853, Thomas Dobson subsequently became the first person to collect information about these systems, in order to attempt to understand and explain the characteristics of 24 tropical cyclones.
[2] During the 1920s Stephen Sargent Visher did some research into tropical cyclones in the Pacific and visited several island nations, including Fiji, Japan and the Philippines, to obtain information on potential systems.
[2] Visher also tried to estimate how many systems were occurring on an annual basis in each area, but overcompensated for his incomplete records and came up with a figure of 12 severe tropical cyclones per year.
[2][3] In the years building up to World War II, Visher's work became the primary source for information about tropical cyclones in the South Pacific.