Cyclone Mitchell to Hit Coast Tonight

In fact, we can play this map one more time, but we'll put the tropical cyclone in there. The category 3 moving slowly to the south-west. It's been moving directly over some of the islands, Barrow Island here saw the tropical cyclone go straight overhead through the latter part of Sunday morning. And we have seen some fairly significant weather observations building over the last 24 hours.

This is 24 hour rainfall up to midday on Sunday, up to 100 mm just south of Karratha, 98 mm in Karratha itself, and just shy of 100 mm over the islands as well. And of course, those winds have been exceptionally strong, particularly over those Pilbara islands, 169 km/h and 148 km/h are incredibly powerful wind gusts. The mainland has had its fair share of wind as well.

Karratha gusting up to 100 km/h, and Onslow up to 98 km/h. And those kinds of very strong winds certainly could continue through the remainder of the day on Sunday, as we are still expecting some fairly significant weather impacts over the rest of the weekend and into the new week. So this is the current location at midday on Sunday of the tropical cyclone is about 80 km north of Onslow, and we have still got Tropical Cyclone Warnings and Watches in play for parts of the north-west.

Now the orange area is the Tropical Cyclone Warning, and there have been a couple of key updates to this in recent hours. Firstly, Karratha is no longer included in the Tropical Cyclone Warning. The worst of the weather has passed for Karratha. Now the tropical cyclone is moving this way. the weather impacts moving this way as well. So the warning extends from Mardie in the north almost all the way to Carnarvon in the south, as well as pushing inland to parts of the western Pilbara and the far north of the Gascoyne.

In this area, we expect damaging to destructive winds to continue through the rest of the day Sunday and into the early hours of Monday morning. Further south, the watch area, shown in yellow, extends down as far as Denham, and here we could see a further impacts moving through on Monday. Those weather impacts could be flash flooding related.

We could see some rivers rise and potential riverine flooding as well. Road closures and community isolation are distinctly possible. Wind damage is possible, whether that's to trees, powerlines or property. And that is all on the cards with those very strong winds that we have already seen and expect to continue to see, and potential for some very high tides as well. Particularly through the high tide this afternoon and then again the high tide overnight tonight, we could see some pretty dangerous conditions on and near the shoreline.

So make sure you're taking care and caution anywhere next to the coast through the north and west, as those tidal levels could be much higher than a typical high tide. We are still expecting a coastal crossing to occur with this tropical cyclone a little bit later on today. In fact, it has slowed down a little bit. So let's check out the latest as to when and where we expect this tropical cyclone to reach the coast. As we zoom in to the north-west we'll see the track brings this tropical cyclone very near Exmouth late on in the day.

In fact, I can put the time onto this map here. That is midnight when we expect the tropical cyclone to be in the vicinity of Exmouth. So perhaps reaching the coast sometime around 11 pm this evening, and we could see it drop from a category 3 to a category 2 as it reaches the coastline, then continue down the western coast here past Coral Bay as a category 2 system.

By midday on Monday, somewhere north of Carnarvon, continuing to move southwards along the coast, bringing quite a lot of weather impacts through the Gascoyne over the next few days. And we'll just track it out through Monday and Tuesday, see where that rain is headed. We'll see this weather system start to disintegrate over the centre of Western Australia late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning.

So that's still a couple of days away. And between now and the end of the day on Tuesday, we'll see quite a lot of rain spread from the north-west through the interior, some heavy falls through parts of the coastal Gascoyne around Carnarvon. We also see some heavy falls potentially moving into parts of the Central West, then getting into parts of the Wheatbelt, maybe as far south as the Great Southern and even the Esperance coast.

This will bring rain to a lot of people over the course of the next few days. For some, that will be a welcome fall of rain. For others, it will be too much at once and may lead to flood impacts. So what that means is through the next few days, if you are in Western Australia, you should stay up to date with your forecast and any potential warnings that do get issued for the tropical cyclone and the subsequent rainfall.

You can find the latest information on the Bureau's website and app. Have a very safe afternoon.