Cyclone Ilsa: Western Australia To Face Its Most Powerful Storm In 10 Years, Residents Begin Fleeing Towns

Residents in parts of Western Australia began evacuating towns as Cyclone Ilsa was upgraded to a Category 4 storm. It has been 10 years since a cyclone of this size hit the WA coast.

Western Australia is set to face Cyclone Ilsa, one of the region’s most destructive storms in more than a decade. This comes as a powerful cyclone is intensifying off the coast of Western Australia and is expected to make landfall later Thursday or Friday morning local time.

CNN reported Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) as informing that Cyclone Ilsa is expected to make landfall somewhere between Port Hedland which is a major port hub for the export of iron ore and Bidyadanga, the home of the state’s largest Aboriginal community.

The cyclone was earlier moving southwest along the coast but its “very destructive core” was expected to swing southeast to make landfall bringing extreme wind gusts of up to 275 kilometers per hour (170 miles per hour), the BOM stated.

Australia uses a five-tier system to categorize cyclones. According to 9 News, residents in parts of Western Australia began evacuating towns as Cyclone Ilsa was upgraded to a Category 4 storm while it moved towards the coast.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center is predicting Ilsa to reach 240 kph (150 mph) in sustained winds prior to landfall, but it may weaken slightly before moving onshore.

“Winds of this strength not only have the ability to bring down trees and power lines but lift items from your yard and home – caravans, trampolines,” BOM’s senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury warned Wednesday, as quoted by CNN in its report.

According to the report, residents have been asked to tie down anything that could become airborne. Emergency services have been reviewing the situation among Aboriginal communities and in mines, pastoral stations, and tourist sites. They are warning people of potential chaos ahead.

Cyclones are common on the west coast of Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology logged seven of them last year.

“There’ll be many people up there who haven’t experienced a Cat 4 cyclone before,” Darren Klemm, Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner of Western Australia said, mentioning that it had been 10 years since a cyclone of this size had hit the WA coast.

The northern coast of Western Australia has witnessed 13 storms on the level of a Category 4 hurricane since 1960, but this is going to be the first since Tropical Cyclone Laurence in 2009, which hit in a very similar location with winds of 150 mph (240 kph) at landfall.

The strongest storm to hit any part of Australia was Tropical Cyclone Monica in 2006. It arrived with sustained winds around 180 mph (290 kph) and swept across the eastern and northern parts of Australia.