Severe weather expected for parts of Western Australia.
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00:00Severe Tropical Cyclone Zelia is a Category 5 tropical cyclone that is going to cross
00:05the Pilbara coastline later on Friday with damaging and destructive winds, heavy rain
00:10and flooding.
00:11Let's get into it with the latest updates from Friday morning because there has been
00:15a couple of significant changes compared to what we were looking at yesterday on Thursday
00:20evening.
00:21Here's the radar imagery from this morning neatly showing the eye of the tropical cyclone
00:25here, this little centre where all the rain is wrapping around through the morning hours
00:29with a bit of motion to it as well, currently moving slowly in the south eastwards direction,
00:35it is sitting around about 100km north of Port Hedland, but that number is shrinking
00:39as this system is getting closer to the coast every hour.
00:43We are seeing this approaching parts of the Pilbara area.
00:47So this is the current location of our Severe Tropical Cyclone, it is a Category 5 system.
00:51Just a reminder, Category 5 is the top of the scale, it does not get any worse than
00:56that.
00:57Extremely damaging and destructive winds, widespread rain, flooding and storm surge
01:01are all expected.
01:02We'll zoom out a little bit to see the tropical cyclone warning area which is extensive and
01:06it has expanded since yesterday as well, stretching from Karratha to Wallal Downs on the coast,
01:12now pushing a long way inland through Marble Bar, Tom Price and down towards Newman as
01:16well.
01:17We do expect to see significant weather impacts throughout this area in the next 24 hours.
01:23Let's zoom in a little bit more now and we'll take a closer look at that all important coastal
01:27crossing, which is forecast to happen later today.
01:30There have been a couple of significant shifts in the most recent information which has come
01:34out at 6am Australian Western Time.
01:37Let's play through the forecast track for the next few hours and we'll see it move southwards
01:42towards the coast.
01:43I want to highlight two key changes compared to what we were looking at yesterday evening.
01:48The first is timing.
01:50If you watched yesterday, we were forecasting a crossing of about 6 or 7pm Western Time
01:54this evening.
01:55That has come forward earlier in the day.
01:58Now the crossing is expected to happen in the afternoon, perhaps around 3 or 4 o'clock
02:02this afternoon as it does cross the coast.
02:05The second significant shift compared to yesterday is the location of the crossing.
02:10We are now expecting the category 5 tropical cyclone to cross east of Port Hedland.
02:16Yesterday that was just to the west of Port Hedland, out over here.
02:19Broadly speaking that won't mean a significant shift to the weather.
02:22We still anticipate very heavy rainfall, damaging and destructive winds in Port Hedland itself.
02:28The one shift that could change is storm surge and storm tide, when the sea levels rise much
02:34higher than a usual high tide and flood coastal locations.
02:38Those storm tides are expected to be most significant on the eastern side of the crossing
02:43point, up over this stretch of coast here out towards Pardu.
02:47That means that Port Hedland perhaps won't see as significant a storm tide as it could
02:52have with a western crossing point.
02:55We're going to zoom out and see how this might actually look this afternoon as the cyclone
02:59crosses.
03:00Firstly we're expecting destructive winds near the crossing point.
03:04We could see wind gusts of 300kmh, it's hard to fathom how strong that is, but it can take
03:09out trees, power lines and completely destroy properties and houses.
03:13More broadly speaking we won't see winds that strong across other parts of the Pilbara
03:17but 100-150kmh gusts are possible for many coastal locations which is very strong wind
03:23nonetheless.
03:25Widespread rainfall and the potential for flooding also persists across almost the entire
03:29area with the heaviest falls once again focused on that coastal crossing location.
03:35We do expect some really significant impacts as this crosses around Port Hedland and for
03:39surrounding parts of the Pilbara area including significant flooding through the rivers and
03:44flash flooding anywhere where the heavy rain occurs.
03:47Destructive winds can knock down trees and houses, take out power and cause significant
03:52stress on infrastructure travel and road networks making things very difficult to get around
03:57in that part of the country.
03:59And storm tides and inundation are possible particularly near and east of where the cyclone
04:03crosses where we could see tides much over their normal level flooding coastal areas,
04:09roads and properties.
04:10We're going to take a look now at what we're expecting in the next few days after this
04:14coastal crossing as the tropical cyclone continues to move inland.
04:17You'll see the numbers gradually dropping, 4 and then down to 2 by Saturday morning.
04:23As this tropical cyclone loses connection with the warm waters over the Pilbara coast
04:27it will gradually weaken in the coming days as it moves further and further into Western
04:32Australia, potentially becoming a tropical low again later in the day on Saturday.
04:37But that will still mean some wind and some rain through large areas of the northern interior
04:42and the central gascoyne of Western Australia even as the system slowly weakens through
04:47the course of the weekend.
04:49Finally a look at how much rain we could get with multiple hundred millimetres of rain
04:53expected about and east of Port Hedland.
04:55We've already had 300 millimetres in some locations, that could be over 500 millimetres
05:00by the time we see the weekend arrive.
05:02So lots of wet weather, flooding and destructive winds.
05:05So if you are in this part of the country or you have loved ones in northern WA, please
05:09do make sure they are up to date with the latest warnings, particularly given the changes
05:13we have been seeing this morning.
05:15You can always get the latest warnings and tropical cyclone information on the Bureau's
05:18website and of course throughout a severe weather event like this, do listen to and
05:22follow any advice from your local emergency services and your local authorities.
05:27Thanks for watching, stay safe.