After roiling off Australia’s northeast coast for over every week, Tropical Cyclone Alfred was poised to make landfall close to Brisbane, the nation’s third-most populous metropolis, in early March 2025. It’s uncommon for a tropical cyclone to hit Australia’s east coast this far south. The final one to achieve land near the Queensland–New South Wales border was Tropical Cyclone Zoe in 1974.
Alfred was the equal of a tropical storm as classified by the U.S. National Weather Service, or a Class 2 storm on the Australian tropical cyclone intensity scale, because it crept towards the coast on March 7. The VIIRS (Seen Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA-21 satellite tv for pc captured this picture of the storm round 1:30 p.m. native time (03:30 Common Time) on that day.
Regardless of its comparatively low classification on the storm scales, Alfred posed severe hazards to areas in its path. Its sluggish tempo exacerbated the damaging results, permitting heavy rains, storm surge, and excessive winds to lash closely populated coastal areas for several days main as much as landfall. Sustained wind speeds of 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour have been noticed across the time this picture was acquired.
The tropical cyclone shaped over the Coral Sea roughly 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) north of Brisbane on February 22. At one level, Alfred coexisted in the South Pacific with two different tropical cyclones, Seru and Rae. It tracked south and southeast for a couple of week, intensifying for a interval however staying offshore. Cyclones in this area typically proceed alongside that trajectory and peter out over the ocean.
Preliminary forecasts predicted Alfred would stay offshore. Nonetheless, on March 4, it made a pointy flip to the west, steered by a high-pressure ridge to the south. Coral Sea cyclones are tough to foretell, experts say: in contrast with different ocean basins, the area sees extra complicated winds and climate programs that may push storms round.
The winds steering Alfred towards land have been comparatively weak, observers noted, which triggered it to maneuver slowly and lengthen its results on the coast. Power from anomalously excessive sea floor temperatures within the northeast Coral—among the warmest recorded for the months of January and February—additionally helped to gasoline the storm system.
Alfred introduced heavy rain and wind to populated areas, together with Brisbane, Gold Coast, and Byron Bay. Climate stations south of Brisbane recorded over 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain within the week ending on March 6. Giant swells and highly effective waves pummeled the Queensland coast for a number of days previous landfall, inflicting coastal erosion and inundation, in line with Australian Bureau of Meteorology officials. Rain and winds would intensify because the storm crossed, meteorologists said, and the bureau issued main flood warnings for a number of rivers.
NASA Earth Observatory picture by Wanmei Liang, utilizing VIIRS knowledge from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and cyclone monitor knowledge from Climate Underground. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
