Tropical Cyclone Maila: BOM upgrades description to ‘severe’ as Australian coast under threat

The Bureau of Meteorology has updated its description of Tropical Cyclone Maila to “severe” as the monster weather front moves toward the Australian coast.

Weather mapping from the BOM now indicates the cyclone will make landfall in Far North Queensland after crossing the Cape York Peninsula later this week.

“Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila in the Solomon Sea to move towards the Far North Queensland coast late in the week,” the latest update said.

“Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila, 37U, is located in the Solomon Sea between Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and is expected to remain slow moving in this region for the next few days before beginning to move to the west southwest by Thursday.

“Maila is expected to move towards the Far North Queensland coast late in the week, potentially crossing the coast late this week or early next week.”

Currently the category 3 cyclone storm front is sitting around 900 kilometres east of Port Moresby, generating winds of up to 150 km/h and wind gusts of over 205 km/h.

“It’s expected to mill around, not moving too much, (but) later in the week it is going to make a west to south-westwards movement,” senior meteorologist Ilana Cherny told the ABC.

“We’re now seeing increasing confidence that it’s going to move towards the Far North Queensland coast.”

The Solomon Islands has issued warnings for the region as heavy rain, storms and gale force winds also pound the regional island communities of the Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea.

“We’ll continue to see some areas of coastal showers over the next few days, but broadly inland will be dry,” Ms Cherny said about the calm before the inevitable storm hits potentially next weekend.

“Once we head towards the weekend and that system moves closer to the coast, that’s when we’ll start to see that increase in rainfall and wind impacts associated with that system.”

“By the middle of the week we will have an improved understanding of how that system’s tracking.”

Another cyclone has also been deemed a category 3 event and is currently hammering Fiji with severe weather.

Tropical Cyclone Vaianu has brought strong winds and heavy rain, with flash flooding alerts across the island nation.

The Solomon Islands Meteorological Service has forecast gale force winds, very rough seas and widespread heavy rain and thunderstorms for the Western Province islands, as well as impacts to other areas according to RNZ.