Cyclone Zelia LIVE updates: Gusts of 285km/h near centre of cyclone as it approaches Port Hedland
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Angus Hines was on Nine’s Today show earlier this morning, where he gave a more accurate forecast of Severe Tropical Cyclone Zelia’s coastal crossing.
Hines said the earlier crossing – predicted between 2pm and 4pm on Friday to the east of Port Hedland – was one of the “significant shifts” in the forecast from Thursday night.
We are expecting Severe Tropical Cyclone Zelia, this category 5 system – which is as strong as they get, it does not get stronger than category 5 – to make landfall, to make a coastal crossing in the next few hours, and there have been a couple of significant shifts since what we saw yesterday evening.
Firstly, it has been brought a little bit earlier; we were thinking about an evening crossing when we were talking about it yesterday, but today that’s been brought forward to the afternoon.
So perhaps between 2pm and 4pm this afternoon is now the most up-to-date forecast for the crossing time of the tropical cyclone.
Also, the area has shifted slightly as well, we are now looking at east of Port Hedland as being the likely location of this coastal crossing, perhaps anywhere from about 20 to 50 kilometres east of Port Hedland.
Areas including Port Hedland in and around that region could bear the brunt of that impact.
We’ve already seen heavy rainfall and flooding occurring across the Pilbara coast over the last couple of days, even as this tropical cyclone is gathering strength, and that rainfall is only going to continue
Then wind is going to be a major issue – we’re talking about winds nearly 300km/h as a possibility.
It’s pretty hard to fathom wind that strong if you’ve never experienced it before, that is incredibly powerful wind, that is absolutely enough to rip out trees, take down power lines and knock down structures, including property and houses as well.
The very, very strongest winds will be closest to where the crossing occurs, which is why that crossing is so important because that is where the extremely destructive winds will occur.
