Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila has intensified to a category five storm over the Solomon Sea, days before an expected landfall in Australia.
It is forecast to hit along the far north Queensland coast just weeks after the same area was buffeted by Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle, which made landfall on 20 March as a category four system.
Maila was located over the Solomon Sea on Wednesday and was expected to make landfall along the Cape York peninsula early next week, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Another major storm system, Severe Tropical Cyclone Vaianu, was expected to make landfall in New Zealand at a similar time to Maila hitting Australia, BoM senior meteorologist Ilana Cherny said.
Cyclone Maila has recorded a lower minimum pressure (924hPa) than Narelle (930hPa) – a measure that suggests greater storm intensity.
Cherny said the storm would start to weaken as it moved south-west towards Australia. “There’s still a range of possibilities in terms of how fast … the system will move towards far north Queensland, but at this stage, it’s likely to cross the coast early next week – most likely later on Monday,” she said.
Following a path similar to Narelle, Maila would probably hit the coast somewhere between the Lockhart river and Cairns, Cherny said. “That’s certainly one of the significant watch points over the next few days.”
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailQueensland communities could start to see the impacts from the weekend onwards, including heavy rain, flood risk in already-saturated catchments, strong winds and hazardous surf, Cherny said.
There was still uncertainty about the strength of the cyclone as it approached Australia, she said, as Maila “looks like it’s going to move close to, if not over, some of the southernmost islands of PNG”.
The cyclone’s effects were on Wednesday being felt in Solomon Islands. Social media images show destruction of property in remote parts of the islands’ Western and Choiseul provinces.
Maila is the seventh storm to reach severe tropical cyclone strength – above category three – this Australian cyclone season, which runs from November to April.
According to BoM data since 1980, of the 10 tropical cyclones in the Australian region each season, only three or four typically make landfall, and only about five reach severe intensity.
Maila was likely to be “the seventh tropical cyclone to make landfall on the Australian mainland this season, and the third to cross the Queensland coast”, Cherny said.
Tropical Cyclone Koji was downgraded to a tropical low just prior to hitting in January, while last month’s Tropical Cyclone Narelle became the first storm system in more than 20 years to make landfall in three of Australia’s states and territories.
Looking further east, Cherny said Severe Tropical Cyclone Vaianu was on Wednesday a category three system, located about 400km south-west of Nadi in Fiji. “As we often see, it will start weakening as it moves out of the tropics,” she said.
The system is expected to “transition into a extra-tropical cyclone on Friday, and track south-southwest towards New Zealand during the weekend”, according to the New Zealand MetService.
Most tracking models have the system crashing into New Zealand’s North Island on the weekend, with the MetService warning of “damaging, potentially life-threatening winds”.
Liz Ritchie-Tyo, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Monash University, said Maila and Narelle both formed “relatively close to the equator”, where they were “put under a circulation pattern or a steering flow that steers them toward the west”, towards Australia.
Global heating is expected to make cyclones less frequent – but those that form are likely to be more intense.
Preliminary observations suggested cyclones seemed to be “moving a bit slower, so when they do make landfall, we feel their effects for longer – and … they weaken more slowly once they do make landfall”, Ritchie-Tyo said.
“Adaptation becomes really important because it might not be about what the most intense wind speed is – it might be about how long those winds stay strong and how far inland they stay strong, where we haven’t really prepared or adapted for those kinds of conditions.”
– with AAP
