Returning now to Cyclone Fina, which is approaching the Northern Territory. The bureau of Meteorology has declared a cyclone warning for Darwin, the Tiwi Islands and parts of West Arnhem Land. Meteorologist Angus Hines says the worst of the weather will hit over the weekend.
00:00What that warning area tells us is the regions of the country, the regions of the top end that we expect those gale force winds to start within the next 24 hours.
00:11So really that means as FINA continues to approach, and it is slowly approaching at the moment, those weather impacts are going to really start to bubble up and really start to intensify in the coming 24 hours.
00:23So FINA is still about 100km off the coastline to the north, it's actually a category 1 tropical cyclone at the moment, it weakened a little bit overnight last night but that's expected to strengthen today to a category 2 tropical cyclone.
00:38It's already brought about 180mm of rain to the exposed northern coast of the Northern Territory and there's certainly more on the way where that came from with a lot more rain still piling into that area.
00:48So both the damaging winds and the heavy rainfall are going to spread across larger parts of the Territory including into Darwin in the coming 24 hours.
00:58For people in Darwin, the most severe weather is expected from around about lunchtime tomorrow, that's Saturday lunchtime through until about the middle of the day on Sunday.
01:09So that's 24 hours or so from midday Saturday through to midday Sunday is where we will probably see the most damaging, strongest wind gusts.
01:17We will also see persistent heavy rainfall so definitely through the course of the weekend that's the time to just stay put, minimize your travel if you can and see this thing through safely.
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