There is a cyclone coming down the West Coast of Australia. Cyclone Narelle.
Narelle’s genesis began on March 15th out in the Coral Sea, off the Queensland coast. It crossed Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland as a category 3 cyclone on the 20th March.
It then traversed the Gulf of Carpentaria, again making landfall in the Northern Territory at Nhulunbuy as a category 4 cyclone on the 21st of March. Passing south of the Northern Territory capital, Darwin then out to sea again at Wadeye.
Narelle intensified again as it passed over the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf in the Timor Sea straddling the borders of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Making landfall north of Wyndham and exiting around Kuri Bay, out into the Indian Ocean.
Currently it is tracking WSW parallel to Western Australia’s Pilbara Coast.
Once again intensifying whilst over the Indian Ocean, Narelle is expected to travel in a southerly trajectory off the Western Australian coast and possibly making landfall at Carnarvon on Friday 27th of March as a category 4 cyclone.
Narelle will be the first Cyclone in more than 20 years to make three separate landfalls across the two states and a territory when severe tropical cyclone Ingrid achieved the feat in 2005.
One of the outside possibilities includes a rare crossing as far south as Perth. But the most likely crossing point at the moment is around the western Gascoyne.
Perth is forecast to receive up to 120mm of rain over Friday and Saturday.
Narelle is expected to track across southwest Western Australia as a category 1 cyclone or reduced to a tropical low passing between Albany and Esperance and out into the Great Australian Bight on 29th of March.