Tropical Cyclone Fina intensifies to a category three system

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina has gathered pace as the recently upgraded category 3 system moves towards Darwin. Senior Meteorologist from the Bureau of Meteorology Dean Narramore spoke to the ABC.

Transcript

00:00Yeah, so we have Tropical Cyclone Warnings current from around the Daly River Mouth all

00:07the way up to Cape Don. Now that includes the entirety of the Tiwi Islands as well as Darwin,

00:13extends inland to Batchelor as well, and all of our coastal communities from Cape Don all

00:18the way down to the Daly River Mouth area. That means we're lucky to see gales within

00:24the coming hours. Right now Tropical Cyclone Severe, I should say, Tropical Cyclone Fina

00:29is around 120 kilometres northeast of Darwin, moving southwest at around 9 or 10 kilometres

00:35an hour. Now we're likely to see that track continuing through the morning and into the

00:39afternoon and overnight hours, and that's going to put it between the Tiwi Islands and Darwin

00:44later this afternoon into the evening hours, and that's when we're likely to see the worst

00:48of the conditions through southern and southwestern parts of the Tiwi Islands and around the Darwin

00:55area and northwest top ends. Now the worst of the conditions, category 3 winds, are going

01:00to be right near the centre of the cyclone. So those 150, 180 kilometre hour winds at this

01:05stage, likely to stay over the water. But for those on the coast and adjacent inland, for

01:10the Tiwis and the northwest top end coast, we're likely to see damaging to locally destructive

01:15winds develop later this afternoon and into the overnight hours, reaching 1, 120 kilometres

01:21an hour, and that's easily enough to cause property damage, bring down trees and power lines,

01:26and cause issues there. Now that's the wind, the rain, we've seen widespread rainfall already,

01:32some of our island locations have seen 200 millimetres in the last 24 hours. Those kind of numbers

01:37are going to move towards the southern Tiwis and parts of the northwest top end, including around the

01:42Darwin area in the next 12 to 24 hours. We've already seen around 20 or 30 millimetres around Darwin and many other areas.

01:49That rain's going to continue to increase as we move through today and tonight. And then finally,

01:53the storm surge element. Thankfully at this stage, not looking too bad around the top end. While we

01:58do have high tide at 8 o'clock, winds are going to be more easterly then and maybe 10 northeasterly after

02:03that. So the tide will be going out as the winds tend onshore. But at this stage, we're going to look

02:08like to see those tides fall just below Hat. But it's all highly dependent on the exact track and

02:13intensity of FINA. If it moves a bit further north, less impacts for Darwin, more impacts for the Tiwis. But if it

02:18wobbles a little bit further south this afternoon, we could see more impacts in Darwin and less impacts

02:22in the Tiwis. So a lot going on today. Absolutely. Certainly the time for people to be hunkering

02:27down and keeping an eye on the Bureau's website. So Dean, how often are you now updating the

02:33Cyclone Track Map and Cyclone Advice? Yeah, we're currently working on the latest update. So very

02:39soon we should start seeing us moving into hourly's now. So from the next issue that you see pop up from

02:44then all the way through till tomorrow morning, we'll be moving into hourly updates for the local

02:49area. So we're going to see those updates every hour. And obviously you continue to track the

02:53Cyclone via radar on our website and also on the BOM weather app. And of course you can listen to all

03:00emergency service advice from the local emergency services there. So yeah, very soon we'll be moving

03:04into hourly updates for the Track Map. All right, Dean Naramore from the Bureau of Meteorology. Thank you very

03:10much. We'll check back in with you in the next couple of hours as well.

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