Press 0 for Samoan When the Cyclone Season Opens

When the National Weather Service office in Pago Pago issued its hurricane season statement at 12.54 pm on 13 October 2026, forecasters wrote it in English. The statement opens the 2026-2027 season for American Sāmoa on 1 November and closes it on 30 April. Forecasters also added a caution about timing. A strong El Niño has raised the risk of tropical cyclone formation in the territory. The office expects storms outside the usual months as well. The product header names zones ASZ001 to ASZ004, the 4 forecast zones of the territory.

American Sāmoa counted 49,710 people in the 2020 census. Among residents aged 5 and over, 96.7% spoke a language other than English at home. Samoan accounted for 90.9% of that group. The Census Bureau also asked how well those residents speak English. Of the residents speaking another language at home, 45.4% reported speaking English very well. The share drops with age. A 2024 Census Bureau cross-tabulation finds that 55.3% of residents aged 65 and over report a spoken English level under the very-well mark of the census form.

The office does publish Samoan. Its own page states that staff issue public forecasts and warnings in English and Samoan at all hours. The WSO page also lists an El Niño impacts leaflet in English and Samoan. Samoan appears again in link labels on the station website. The site labels its tide link Tala o le Tai (tide information). Its storm report link appears as Ripoti mai le Tau (report the weather).

On the products page, the office lists 28 text products under English titles. The list includes the Zone Forecast Product and the Tropical Cyclone Local Statement. The 13 October text appears on that list as a Public Information Statement. Residents find it at weather.gov/ppg and on the @nwspagopago social accounts, the 2 addresses the statement gives for the latest information.

Step 1 asks residents to know their risk in low-lying coastal areas and near streams prone to flooding and landslide. Step 2 asks for a family evacuation and emergency plan, with shelter locations and safe roads to higher ground. Step 3 asks owners to inspect the roof and to secure loose outdoor items. Step 4 sets the emergency supply kit at 14 days and asks families to store important documents in waterproof containers. Step 5 directs residents to ASDHS/TEMCO officials and warns them against unverified posts circulating on social media.

The opening encourages residents to begin preparing, a polite form addressed to the whole territory. Step 3 switches to an order and tells residents to secure their property without waiting for a cyclone to approach. A Samoan version picks a strength for those 2 tones, because a polite suggestion and a direct instruction sound different to a family deciding whether to leave a house near a stream.

Many residents of Saragosa in Texas spoke only Spanish in 1987. The local Spanish-language radio station aired a Spanish version of the NWS warning. According to researchers at the University of Illinois, a literal Spanish version of the English term warning failed to convey its meaning to listeners. An F4 tornado then struck the town and injured or killed 151 of its 183 residents.

Huri translators localised a set of cyclone warnings for a regional disaster-management body in the Pacific. Local responders flagged a gently worded advisory in 2 review rounds. Residents had taken it as optional. The translators rewrote that advisory as an order. They also fixed the wording per alert level. The responders approved the templates for broadcast outside an event, which spared the responders a hurried rewrite in the hours of a landfall.

In step 2, the 13 October text spells the word for blocked roads as impassible. Dictionaries define impassible as incapable of feeling or suffering. The intended word is impassable, closed to traffic. Huri reviewers log a line of that kind as a source query with the issuing office, because the Samoan sentence names a road condition and the translator commits to it.

In 2026 Joseph Trujillo-Falcón of the University of Illinois and Monica Bozeman of the NWS published a map of translation needs for all 122 NWS offices. They built it from census and weather data. Their paper appeared in Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems. A design document dated 16 March 2026 describes the NWS experimental translation website. The site lists Samoan among its machine-translated languages. The Weather-Ready Nation page puts Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese graphics online and lists Samoan graphics as coming soon.

The NWS paused its translated products in April 2025 after a contract lapsed. The service announced their return later that month. Huri published a comparison of machine output in Samoan against a human translation.

Callers to the office phone line press 0 for Samoan recordings and follow a separate prompt for English. The territory receives 2 NOAA Weather Radio stations, WZ2529 on 162.550 MHz and WNG710 on 162.400 MHz. The step 4 supply kit lists a battery-powered radio among its contents, beside flashlights and a first aid kit.