Gold Coast beaches have been closed to swimmers, but some surfers are still going into the swell. Video / Surfing Australia
The outer fringe of a tropical cyclone started whipping eastern Australia today, bringing drenching rains and record-breaking waves to a heavily populated region rarely hit by typhoons.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred was 285km east of busy Brisbane city after unexpectedly slowing above the Coral Sea overnight, government forecasts said.
Some four million people were in the firing line along a 400km stretch of coastline expected to see the worst of the storm.
“We’re already seeing gales developing on the coastal fringe,” Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Sarah Scully told AFP.
“There have been very large waves and powerful swells. That’s generated by Alfred lingering in the Coral Sea and creating a whole lot of wave energy.”
A 12.4m wave was recorded on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane, Scully said, the largest swell ever picked up by that monitoring station.
Record-breaking waves are seen as the outer fringe of Tropical Cyclone Alfred started whipping eastern Australia, in Coolangatta on March 6. Photo / AFP
Tropical Cyclone Alfred was initially forecast to strike land late on Thursday evening, but was now expected to arrive Friday afternoon or even early Saturday morning.
While this gave coastal hamlets more time to stack sandbags and stockpile food, Scully warned it also left them exposed to wild weather on the storm’s outer edges.
“It will mean that the coastal areas are exposed for a longer period of time.”
Some towns had already seen “well over” 200mm of rain, Scully said.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred would cross the coast somewhere near the bustling metropolitan hub of Brisbane, the weather bureau said.
It would be the first cyclone to make landfall in the area for more than 50 years.
“There’s a lot of people in harm’s way here. We’re talking about something like four-and-a-half million Australians,” said senior Government minister Jim Chalmers.
“It’s rare for a cyclone to be this far south and to threaten such a huge population area.”
A resident is reflected in a window as she walks past a row of sandbags covering the front of a shop in the town of Lismore. Photo / AFP
More than 900 schools across Queensland and the flood-prone northern rivers region of New South Wales were closed on Thursday morning, education department officials said.
While cyclones are common in the warm tropical waters lapping Australia’s northern flank, it is rarer for them to form in cooler waters further south.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred would be the first to make landfall in that part of Australia since 1974, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Researchers have repeatedly warned that climate change amplifies the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones.
