Tropical Cyclone Maila: Pacific hammered as BOM declares weather front heading for Australia category 5

Two huge cyclones are wreaking havoc in the Pacific region, with the Bureau of Meteorology upgrading one to category 5 as it moves toward Australia.

The severe weather fronts dominate radar imagery, with Tropical Cyclone Maila hovering in waters near Papua New Guinea and Tropical Cyclone Vaianu hammering Fiji and areas close to Vanuatu.

Residents in Far North Coast Queensland are preparing for the worst as forecasters predict Maila will make landfall in Australia sometime over the weekend with potential wind gusts of over 200 km/h.

Cyclone Maila was located in the Solomon Sea, between the Solomon Islands and eastern Papua New Guinea and is projected to impact the far southeastern tip of PNG by Friday morning.

The slow-moving system is then expected to move toward the Far North Queensland coast by Sunday or early next week.

One forecaster says the Maila may end up bigger than Tropical Cyclone Narele, which battered West Australia’s Cape York Peninsula in March, but because of its size, it may not be as intense

“(They’re) two quite different cyclones,” BOM Senior Forecaster Liam Smart told the ABC.

“Maila is a lot bigger than Narelle and probably not going to be as strong.”

TC Maila is currently sitting around 980km east of Port Moresby with wind gusts of up to 295km/h.

However, the cyclone may lose some of its force after moving over PNG’s mountain ranges and into the cooler Coral Sea, Mr Smart said.

“There’s a bit of uncertainty as to where the cyclone will cross,” he said.

“We’re expecting somewhere between, say, Cooktown and the tip of the peninsula, but as the time gets a little bit closer, we’ll be able to pinpoint that location more.”

“There is potential for some extra rainfall as some easterly winds start pushing on the coast after the cyclone has crossed into potentially the north tropical coast area,” he added.

Tropical Cyclone Vaianu formed near Fiji and is currently a category 3 severe tropical cyclone, causing heavy rain and strong winds as it passes west of Fiji and east of Vanuatu, without making landfall in either nation, according to Weather Zone.

Vaianu is expected to track south during the week, more or less making a beeline towards the North Island of New Zealand.

While it will no longer be a tropical cyclone, it is likely to hit Auckland and nearby areas during the weekend as an “extratropical cyclone”, a type of system which can pack as much strength as a category 2 or 3 cyclone in terms of its central pressure and wind speeds.

The NZ Met Service currently has no warnings in place for this system; this is likely to change as the week rolls on.

Early indications are that one and possibly two more cyclones could form in northern Australian waters this week, most likely off the Northern Territory and Western Australia.