Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila has intensified to a category five storm over the Solomon Sea, days before an expected landfall in Australia.<\/p>\n
It is forecast to hit along the far north Queensland<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Maila is the seventh storm to reach severe tropical cyclone strength \u2013 above category three \u2013 this Australian cyclone season. Illustration: Bureau of Meteorology<\/p>\n Another major storm system, Severe Tropical Cyclone Vaianu<\/a>, was expected to make landfall in New Zealand at a similar time to Maila hitting Australia, BoM senior meteorologist Ilana Cherny said.<\/p>\n Cyclone Maila has recorded a lower minimum pressure (924hPa) than Narelle (930hPa) \u2013 a measure that suggests greater storm intensity.<\/p>\n Cherny said the storm would start to weaken as it moved south-west towards Australia. \u201cThere\u2019s still a range of possibilities in terms of how fast \u2026 the system will move towards far north Queensland, but at this stage, it\u2019s likely to cross the coast early next week \u2013 most likely later on Monday,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Following a path similar to Narelle, Maila would probably hit the coast somewhere between the Lockhart river and Cairns, Cherny said. \u201cThat\u2019s certainly one of the significant watch points over the next few days.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n Queensland 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.<\/p>\n There was still uncertainty about the strength of the cyclone as it approached Australia, she said, as Maila \u201clooks like it\u2019s going to move close to, if not over, some of the southernmost islands of PNG\u201d.<\/p>\n The cyclone\u2019s effects were on Wednesday being felt in Solomon Islands. Social media images show destruction of property in remote parts of the islands\u2019 Western and Choiseul provinces.<\/p>\n Maila is the seventh storm to reach severe tropical cyclone strength \u2013 above category three \u2013 this Australian cyclone season, which runs from November to April.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Maila was likely to be \u201cthe seventh tropical cyclone to make landfall on the Australian mainland this season, and the third to cross the Queensland coast\u201d, Cherny said.<\/p>\n Tropical Cyclone Koji<\/a> was downgraded to a tropical low just prior to hitting in January, while last month\u2019s Tropical Cyclone Narelle<\/a> became the first storm system in more than 20 years to make landfall in three of Australia\u2019s states and territories.<\/p>\n Allow Facebook content?<\/p>\n This article includes content provided by Facebook. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cAs we often see, it will start weakening as it moves out of the tropics,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The system is expected to \u201ctransition into a extra-tropical cyclone on Friday, and track south-southwest towards New Zealand during the weekend\u201d, according to the New Zealand MetService.<\/p>\n Most tracking models have the system crashing into New Zealand\u2019s North Island on the weekend, with the MetService warning of \u201cdamaging, potentially life-threatening winds\u201d.<\/p>\n Liz Ritchie-Tyo, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Monash University, said Maila and Narelle both formed \u201crelatively close to the equator\u201d, where they were \u201cput under a circulation pattern or a steering flow that steers them toward the west\u201d, towards Australia.<\/p>\n Global heating is expected to make cyclones less frequent \u2013 but those that form are likely to be more intense.<\/p>\n Preliminary observations suggested cyclones seemed to be \u201cmoving a bit slower, so when they do make landfall, we feel their effects for longer \u2013 and \u2026 they weaken more slowly once they do make landfall\u201d, Ritchie-Tyo said.<\/p>\n \u201cAdaptation becomes really important because it might not be about what the most intense wind speed is \u2013 it might be about how long those winds stay strong and how far inland they stay strong, where we haven\u2019t really prepared or adapted for those kinds of conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013 with AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila has intensified to a category five storm over the Solomon Sea, days before an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-593446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}