Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\nThe Bureau of Meteorology released an updated map of the likely track and intensity of the cyclone on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Jonathan How, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the cyclone was expected to make landfall near the town of Coen on Friday morning as a category 4 system.<\/p>\n
After that, the system was likely to hold its cyclone status as it reached the waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria where it would likely intensify from a category 1 to a category 3 before making a second landfall on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
How said it would likely loose its wind speed and become a tropical low as it moved west, but could drop significant rain over the Top End – a region where the ground is already saturated with some areas such as Katherine and Daly River still in recovery mode from floods.<\/p>\n
What happens after that is more uncertain, How said, but there was one scenario where the system leaves the land and re-intensifies into a cyclone and makes a third landfall in Western Australia early next week.<\/p>\n
The bureau was due to issue a new track map late Wednesday.<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday afternoon, emergency watch and act warnings had been issued for the Cook Shire, Mapoon, Aurukun, Weipa and Coen and Port Stewart.<\/p>\n
In Darwin, the Bureau of Meteorology\u2019s Jude Scott said on Wednesday afternoon the system was likely to track over the Top End on Sunday bringing heavy rainfall of between 150mm and 200 mm over a 24-hour period close to the centre of the system.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cGiven the already saturated river catchments right across the Top End, this rainfall will likely lead to renewed river rises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirsten Engels, incident controller at NT Police, said the cyclone would be the seventh significant event the region had faced this wet season.<\/p>\n
\u201cBegin your preparations now and take this really seriously. We are going to get through this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said evacuating the town of Katherine, where a flood warning is still in place after recent heavy rains, was \u201cnot on the table right now but that\u2019s not to say it won\u2019t change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg Jarvis, deputy chief officer of the NT Emergency Service, urged residents to prepare their emergency packs and become familiar with their cyclone plans and rescue centres.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cTake a big deep breath\u2026 we have to go again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cyclone categories are dictated by the average expected maximum wind speed which, at category 4, is between 160 km\/h and 199 km\/h. Category 5 systems have wind speeds of 200 km\/h or above.<\/p>\n
Cyclone categories don\u2019t take account of other hazards, such as flooding or tidal surges.<\/p>\n
Category 4 storms can deliver significant roofing loss, structural damage and can blow away caravans and generate dangerous airborne debris with widespread power failures.<\/p>\n
Category 5 storms are described by the bureau as \u201cextremely dangerous with widespread destruction of buildings and vegetation\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Queenslanders could be facing the biggest tropical cyclone \u201cin living memory\u201d, with the massive Tropical Cyclone Narelle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-335451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}