TC Mitchell to Drench WA With Rain This Week

And just in the last few hours, Mitchell has started to lose its shape a little bit. And it has now returned to a category one tropical cyclone, very, very close to the Western Australia coastline, and will continue to bring weather impacts to the north-west of the country through the rest of the day today, and then through the next few days, will bring a widespread band of rain to many parts of Western Australia.

We can see the progression of Tropical Cyclone Mitchell overnight last night by looking at our radar imagery and watching these bands of rain rotate about a central point. And that central point started up here north of Exmouth and then moved southwards, and it's now been hugging this western coastline somewhere just south of Coral Bay.

We can play that one more time. We'll put the tropical cyclone on. It was a category two system through most of the night as it went north of Exmouth, then down the coast. It has just become a category one tropical cyclone as of 8 am AWST this morning.

And this is where it is located, within about 20 km of the coastline. But we haven't yet seen our official coastal crossing.

As a category one tropical cyclone this close to the country, we still have got our Tropical Cyclone Warning in play for this area here. We've recently seen Onslow and Exmouth removed from the warning area, as the worst of the weather is over for those communities. But the warning continues from Ningaloo in the north, down to somewhere south of Denham, almost all the way to Murchison in the south, including Denham, Carnarvon, Cape Cuvier and Coral Bay.

And in this area, we could continue to see tropical cyclone impacts today, particularly rainfall, which leads to road closures and potential community isolation. Winds may gust up to 120 km an hour now, especially along the coast. That can damage trees, property and power lines. And we might still see some dangerous tides around the afternoon high tide today, particularly around the Carnarvon area.

So when that tide is rising, it may rise higher than usual. That can lead to flooding of low-lying coastal areas, and there will be very rough conditions on the ocean as well because of those intense winds.

Let's take a look at what we expect to happen through the remainder of today and into the week. As the tropical cyclone will move southwards as a category one system, it will move into Western Australia from tonight onwards as it starts to move more in an easterly path. At that point, it will likely go from a category one tropical cyclone to a tropical low pressure area, and that will mean the wind will start to ease off.

But there will still be the potential for significant rainfall as this tropical low tracks towards central Western Australia. It will be quite hard to pull out an official coastal crossing location because we expect this tropical cyclone to really hug the coastline. But it may make its official crossing somewhere south of Coral Bay this afternoon, and then stay very near the coast, forecast to cross almost directly over Carnarvon as a category one tropical cyclone a little bit later on tonight.

So currently 9 am, it's near Coral Bay. By 9 pm this evening, it's likely to be somewhere near Carnarvon. And then by 9 am Tuesday morning, it's going to be down here, can't really see it but near the bottom of the map, moving inland by Tuesday morning.

I would like to touch on the rainfall it's going to bring through central and western parts of the state as well. The tropical low moves this way, this big band of rain spreads out through many areas. In fact, let's put on the rainfall accumulations to give us a little bit of a better idea of who is likely to see some significant falls with this weather system.

We can zoom in a touch, and where we're seeing these darker red to purple colours, that's showing us 50 mm to 100 mm of rain forecast in the next 48 hours. And that covers a pretty large part of the state. Up here near where the tropical cyclone is now, certainly seeing some heavy rainfall in the next 24 hours.

For the coastal parts of the Gascoyne region, the Central West will pick up some of the heavier falls, 50 mm to 100 mm, isolated areas getting over 100 mm around the likes of Geraldton and Jurien Bay, particularly a little bit inland.

And then we're going to be seeing rainfall push into the Wheatbelt. And again, we could see some very significant accumulations, up to or potentially over 100 mm of rain, through parts of the Wheatbelt and the Great Southern, with significant rain also pushing into the southern Goldfields and all the way down here into the Esperance coast.

For some people, this will be the first significant drop of rain since spring, as it has been a very, very dry summer for much of Western Australia so far.

We may see further warnings issued for that heavy rainfall today, tomorrow or even into Wednesday, so you can stay up to date with both the Tropical Cyclone Warnings and any warnings that get issued for future rainfall on the Bureau's website or app.

Thanks for watching this video. Stay safe.