Cyclone Mitchell Strikes Pilbara Today

We can start by looking at our satellite imagery from the last 12 hours. And we can see clear as day the tropical cyclone revolving through the satellite image here off the north-western coast of the country, getting very close to Western Australia, but it hasn't yet moved on to Western Australia. And we can actually get an even stronger confidence of the position of the tropical cyclone by looking at our radar imagery, because we see these bands of heavy rain shown in the yellow spinning around the centre of the tropical cyclone.

And through the night last night it has moved close to Karratha while remaining offshore up to the north. But it has been bringing some reasonably significant weather impacts already yesterday and then through the night last night, including some quite heavy rainfall to parts of the north-west. Karratha itself has picked up 66 mm of rain since 9 am on Saturday. We've seen a little bit more than that out over the islands as well, up to 91 mm and continuing to climb around Varanus Island, and a little further to the south Upper Portland has had 75 mm.

And that number is also likely to go up. While we have seen a reasonable amount of rainfall, it's been the wind which has been most powerful and most impressive so far, particularly again over those offshore islands in particular. Take a look at Legendre Island, which had 169 km/h wind gusts as the tropical cyclone moved almost directly overhead there during the second half of the day on Saturday. Karratha has picked up wind gusts of around 100 km/h and 117 km/h at Varanus islands.

Let's take a look at the current state of play. We know the tropical cyclone is a severe category 3 strength. It is currently north of Mardie. It has moved past Karratha and it's continuing to move in a south-westward trajectory. That is going to take it near parallel with the coast over the next few hours through Sunday morning and into Sunday afternoon, and it's likely to then veer a little bit more to the south, which is going to take it onto the far north-west of the country.

So because it is so close and continuing to get closer, of course we've continued our Tropical Cyclone warnings for the north-western corner. And again you can see the two colours here. We'll start off with the darker orange. That's the Tropical Cyclone Warning zone that goes from Roebourne through Karratha, Mardie, Onslow, Exmouth, Ningaloo, all the way down to Cape Cuvier down here in the south.

This is the area which is likely to see the most significant weather impacts today on Sunday. We could see wind gusts of 120 km/h right through this area. But along this stretch of coast here between Karratha and Exmouth, that exposed coastline will get the absolute strongest winds. We could see more gusts over 150 km/h like we did around the islands here, potentially as high as 190 km/h.

We will also see rain and potential for storms spreading through this region. The Tropical Cyclone Watch area here, which extends down past Carnarvon to Wooramel Roadhouse, that is where we could see some of the more significant impacts picking up on Monday. So through these watch and warning areas, we expect to see heavy rainfall and storms could lead to flash flooding, could lead to rivers flooding, and will almost certainly lead to significant road closures, which may isolate communities.

The very strong wind gusts up and over 150 km/h could bring down entire trees, damage property and cause significant power outages in the north-western corner of the country and for residents on and near the coastline. Watch out for extremely high tidal levels as the tropical cyclone can push seawater onto the shore. This could particularly be an issue around Onslow at the high tide, which is around 2 pm local time this afternoon, so absolutely take care and extra caution on and near the water.

We may see flooding of low-lying coastal areas due to the storm surge, as well as very dangerous conditions on the ocean. Let's take a slightly closer look at where we expect the tropical cyclone to reach and cross the coastline later on today. It's likely to be quite late in the day on Sunday, potentially the evening hours by the time this tropical cyclone does reach the coast.

If we zoom in on the possible trajectory, we'll see this category 3 likely to reach the coastline somewhere between Exmouth and Onslow, potentially just over the peninsula. We may then see on Monday morning it just spits back out into the water for a while before curving more towards the south-east and coming back on land somewhere near Carnarvon. A category three tropical cyclone initially, then dropping to a category one once it makes its way onto the country.

I do want to briefly talk about Monday and Tuesday, because this weather system is going to be with us for a number of days as it's going to slide southwards through the interior of Western Australia as a weakening, decaying weather system between Monday and Wednesday. It gets all the way from Exmouth down to somewhere down here in the south over the course of a couple of days, and we'll see a lot of rain spreading through interior parts of Western Australia as this weather system does push inland.

So broadly speaking, we see this band of rain where we could get 50 mm to 100 mm over central parts of Western Australia. Do stay up to date with the latest forecast, the latest warnings and especially up to date with the latest emergency warnings through your local emergency management.

You can find the latest weather information on the Bureau's website and app. Thanks for watching and stay safe.