Tropical Cyclone Ita slams into northern Queensland

A few days ago, I wrote a blog about Severe Tropical Cyclone Ita, as it sat over the Pacific Ocean, gaining strength and heading towards Australia.

Today (late-Friday local time), it slammed into the north Queensland coast, making landfall near Cape Flattery.

Whilst not a big storm in terms of size, it has certainly been packing a punch, with steady winds of around 145mph and gusts of 170mph as it approached the coastline.

However, as with all these tropical cyclones, as soon as the forward edge of the storm interacts with land, it starts to weaken.

This is due to frictional forces of a rough land, compared to the relative smoothness of the ocean surface.

The easiest way to think of this is riding a bike on smooth tarmac and suddenly moving into knee-high grass. Suddenly the speed at which you travel decreases.

According to data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the strongest gust of wind recorded so far is 99mph at Cape Flattery.

Three inches of rain have fallen during the last 12 hours along the coast at Cooktown and Cape Flattery, with much more to come in the next 24 hours.

The latest forecast (below) takes the storm a little inland and parallel to the north Queensland coast, before moving back out to sea.

Warnings have been issued for destructive winds, heavy rain, a storm surge and flooding. It will be interesting to see the impacts of the storm when first light reaches Australia tomorrow.

I’ll be posting updates on the storm throughout the day on Twitter – @liamdutton

Images: Naval Research Laboratory, Met Office