After stalling off the coast overnight, Cyclone Alfred is now expected to make landfall later than expected, into late Friday or early Saturday.
Cyclones can be unpredictable, but the prolonged arrival has some important implications for the potential impact when it does cross the coast.
On the one hand, affected communities have a bit more time to prepare. But on the other, many will be exposed to damaging winds, huge swell and heavy rainfall for longer.
That kind of severe weather has already started to affect parts of the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Brisbane’s bayside suburbs.
So how could this change Alfred’s impact?
Where is Cyclone Alfred?
Cyclone Alfred is currently sitting about 225 kilometres offshore from Brisbane, or 210km east-north-east of the Gold Coast.
It’s slowed down since yesterday and is moving west at 8 kilometres per hour.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Sarah Scully explained earlier today that Cyclone Alfred stalled overnight, slowing down its track toward the coast.
“It’s just one of those things — tropical cyclones are very difficult to track perfectly,” she told ABC News this morning.
“We’ve still got it crossing somewhere between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, however, the timing is a little bit harder to forecast.”
When is Cyclone Alfred expected to hit?
The BOM’s latest advice, issued around 5pm, suggests the cyclone could now make landfall Friday night or early Saturday morning.
“Cyclone Alfred briefly doubled back on its path. This erratic movement has resulted in a delay to the forecast crossing,” the BOM’s Matthew Collopy said earlier today.
Cyclone Alfred is now expected to cross the coast on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday, most likely between Noosa and Coolangatta.
In the meantime, for coastal communities that are already seeing large swells and high winds, it means a longer period of time exposed to those extremes.
Could the cyclone escalate to a category three?
Cyclones feed off warm waters, so the longer a system sits over the water, the more potential it has to gain energy.
But it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case with Alfred.
What intensity will Alfred be when it makes landfall?
Johnson said on Wednesday that some models were suggesting Alfred could intensify into a category-three system before it made landfall, with even more destructive winds, but the chances of that had fallen away.
“The chances of it intensifying has reduced and it’s now expected to be a category-one at landfall but for much of the approach it could still be a high-end category-two,” she said.
Cyclone categories only reflect wind speeds and don’t account for the amount of rainfall or flooding.
Johnson said while the landfall was expected to be in the vicinity of Brisbane city, with one US model having it slightly north, it was important people did not focus on that aspect.
Destructive winds, extreme rainfall, flooding and coastal impacts were likely to occur over a wide area, from the Sunshine Coast to northern NSW.
The bureau was warning on Thursday morning that a vast area from Double Island Point near K’gari in Queensland to Grafton in northern NSW should expect gales over the coming 24 hours.
