Good morning. It’s Angus here at the Bureau of Meteorology.

I wanted to get into the studio nice and early this morning so I could let you see what we are seeing with Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle, and that is that the severe tropical cyclone has made landfall in north-eastern parts of Queensland as a Category 4 system and will bring some severe weather across northern parts through today, Friday.

Now this is going to be a short update.

We will have a longer severe weather update later on today talking about the forecast, but for now let’s just discuss what we are seeing.

And the best way to do that is by looking at our rain radar imagery.

We can see widespread rain across the Peninsula through the course of this morning, but in particular, look at how this rain circles around a central point, which we can see just in the last couple of hours.

So the centre of this area is the centre of our low pressure, and the centre of our low pressure is the centre of our tropical cyclone.

And that has made landfall at about 7 a.m.

Queensland time this morning, 50 km to the north-east of Coen as a Category 4 tropical cyclone.

The orange area is the warning region that still includes locations like Lockhart River, Coen and Cape Flattery in the east, Mapoon, Weipa and Pormpuraaw in the west.

These areas will have a significant day of weather, including the potential for some very destructive wind gusts.

The strongest winds will be right near the centre of the tropical cyclone, where we could see wind speeds reach or exceed 200 km an hour.

Across broader regions, winds could reach 120 km to 160 km an hour.

These winds are strong enough to strip or uproot entire trees and cause significant property damage.

Rain has started to fall heavily, and that will continue on Friday, bringing risks of flash flooding and riverine flooding.

Some locations are already over 100 mm of rain for the day, and a few hundred more could still fall on Friday, bringing our totals for the 24 hours up in excess of 300 mm, possibly 400 mm, especially along the path of the tropical cyclone.

And dangerous seas are expected, including very high tides and very large and powerful surf.

So hopefully everyone is staying well clear of those dangerous oceans.

I’m not going to get too far into the forecast for this short video, but just a quick look at timing for Friday.

This weather system will start off on the east coast and gradually cross the Cape York Peninsula through the day.

It is likely to drop from a Category 4 system to a Category 2 system throughout Friday and eventually tonight around 8 or 9:00 pm, leave the west coast and move out into the Gulf of Carpentaria.

As I said earlier, we will have a longer severe weather video talking about the forecast as this system moves towards the Northern Territory in the next few days, but you can always get track updates, warning updates and forecast information on the Bureau website and the BOM Weather app.

Thanks for watching and stay safe.