Another wild night ahead as Alfred approaches southeast Queensland
Heavy rain and powerful winds will batter parts of southeast Queensland and northeast NSW on Friday night into Saturday morning as Tropical Cyclone Alfred edges closer to the coast.
At 3pm AEST on Friday, Alfred was a category two tropical cyclone located 120 kilometres to the east southeast of Brisbane.
While Alfred’s eye was still more than 100 km away from Brisbane on Friday afternoon, areas of heavy rain and damaging winds have been lashing parts of northeast NSW and southeast Qld in the last 24 hours. Some areas in northeast NSW received 50 to 100mm of rain between 9am and 5pm on Friday.
The animation below shows bands of rain wrapping around the centre of Tropical Cyclone Alfred on Friday, some of which was soaking parts of eastern Australia.
Image: Composite radar and satellite imagery showing the clouds and rain swirling around Tropical Cyclone Alfred on Friday.
The animation above shows that the rain swirling around Alfred’s core is being broken up by slots of drier air with little or no rainfall. These drier slots caused breaks in the rain in northeast NSW and southeast Qld on Friday, which caused relatively calm weather that may have caught some people by surprise.
However, the green and yellow shaded areas to the south of Alfred in the animation above show that heavy rain was still occurring offshore to the south of Alfred’s centre on Friday afternoon. This broad area of heavy rain will push over northeast NSW and southeast Qld on Friday night, accompanied by squally cyclonic winds.
Friday night’s wind and rain is likely to cause more flooding and may bring down trees and cut power lines in some areas. This dangerous weather will persist into Saturday morning, with Tropical Cyclone Alfred currently expected to make landfall over the Moreton Bay Islands on Saturday morning and then cross the mainland coast somewhere between Noosa and Beenleigh Heads later on Saturday.
A tropical cyclone warning and numerous severe weather and flood warnings are in place for parts of southeast Qld and northeast, so be sure to check the latest warnings in your area.