Skip to Content

News

Home>Weather News>Rainfall records tumble as Cyclone Sean intensifies

Search Icon

Rainfall records tumble as Cyclone Sean intensifies

Anthony Sharwood
Image: The very small eye of Cyclone Sean is visible on the combined radar and satellite image at 7am on January 20, 2025. Source: Weatherzone
Image: The very small eye of Cyclone Sean is visible on the combined radar and satellite image at 7am on January 20, 2025. Source: Weatherzone

Severe Tropical Cyclone Sean off the coastline of northwest WA is now a Category 3 system and could yet become as strong as Category 4.

Overnight, it lashed Western Australia's Pilbara coastline with extremely heavy rain and damaging winds, however the good news is that it is now predicted to track out to sea in a southwesterly direction.

In the latest BoM bulletin issued at 8:48 (AWST), the storm was:

  • Located 205 kilometres northwest of Exmouth and 285 kilometres west northwest of Onslow.
  • Packing sustained winds near the centre of 150 km/h with gusts to 205 km/h.
  • Moving in a southwesterly direction at 20 km/h.
  • Still generating heavy to locally intense rainfall along WA’s Pilbara coastline from Mardie to North West Cape.
  • Possibly intensifying to Category 4 later today, albeit well off the coast.

Image: Three-hour loop showing heavy rain around the eye of Cyclone Sean off the WA coast as dawn breaks on Monday, January 20, 2025.

Extremely heavy rainfall totals exceeding 100mm were recorded at numerous Pilbara region locations in the 24 hours up until 9am Monday (AWST) with the large town of Karratha (population 17,000) topping the list:

  • Karratha recorded 274.4mm iin the 24 hours to 9am.
  • The old monthly record for January (in more than 50 years of records) was 263.4mm.
  • That means that Karratha has exceeded its entire monthly January rainfall record in a single day.
  • Indeed, Karratha has just had its wettest day on record in any month.

Image: The BoM’s predicted path for Severe Tropical Cyclone Sean on Monday, January 20, 2025 into the early morning of January 21. Source: BoM.

As the track map above shows, the cyclone is expected to steer clear of the WA coastline for the duration of its life.

However as it moves in a southwesterly direction more or less parallel to the coast, a storm tide is forecast between Onslow and Exmouth during Monday afternoon's high tide.

Large waves could produce minor flooding along the foreshore and the BoM advises people in areas likely to be affected to take reasonable measures to protect their property and be prepared to help their neighbours.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Sean is the second cyclone of the 2024/25 season in the Australian region, after Cyclone Robyn in November – a storm which caused damage in Indonesia but had little to no impact on Australia.

In an average tropical cyclone season, we typically see around 9 to 11 tropical cyclones inside Australia's area of responsibility.

Note to media: You are welcome to republish text from the above news article as direct quotes from Weatherzone. When doing so, please reference www.weatherzone.com.au in the credit.