For almost two weeks Tropical Cyclone Alfred has ambled about the Coral Sea.
By Wednesday afternoon, as Alfred’s forecasted landfall loomed, meteorologists mapping the cyclone’s trajectory were predicting it would move directly over Brisbane, with the city roughly aligning with the eye of the storm.
Evacuations had begun in at-risk coastal areas while other residents went to bed on Wednesday evening expecting the cyclone to arrive the next day.
But meteorologists announced on Thursday morning that Alfred’s path to the coast had slowed, with landfall expected early Saturday.
As well as the impacts of wind and waves from the Sunshine Coast down into northern New South Wales, forecasts of up to a metre of rain and heavy downfalls over several days have millions of people preparing for the prospect of flooding.
At 4.45pm AEDT on Thursday, the Bureau of Meteorology said Alfred remained a category 2 system with wind gusts of up to 130km/h. It was moving slowly towards the coast, 225km east of Brisbane.
The centre of the cyclone was expected to cross the coast Friday night or early Saturday morning, most likely between Noosa and Coolangatta.
The New South Wales State Emergency Service warned people in 11 locations to evacuate before 9pm on Thursday: Uki, Fingal Heads and Tumbulgum in the Tweed catchment; North Lismore, South Lismore, Lismore CBD and East Lismore in the Lismore catchment; Bungawalbin and low lying parts of Kyogle and Coraki in the Richmond catchment; and Billinudgel in the Brunswick catchment.
Queensland police warned people on the Gold Coast to prepare to take shelter on Thursday night.
Authorities in Brisbane said 20,000 properties in the city were at risk of inundation from a storm surge or flooding as Alfred continued its ominous track towards the populated south-east Queensland coast.
While not entirely unprecedented, this is the first time in a generation that south-east Queenslanders and people south of the Tweed have braced to hunker down or evacuate their homes in the face of a cyclone.
“This is a rare event,” the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said in the Queensland capital on Wednesday. “To have a tropical cyclone in an area that is not classified as part of the tropics.”
When is Tropical Cyclone Alfred going to hit?
On Thursday Jane Golding from the Bureau of Meteorology said the system was expected to cross late on Friday or early Saturday morning.
Later in the day the Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, said the most likely scenario was a coastal crossing on Saturday morning.
Earlier in the week BoM meteorologists said there was a chance Alfred could intensify to a category-three storm but that the most likely scenario was it reaching land as category-one or category-two, with damaging wind gusts of 130km/h in coastal areas.
Alfred was expected to cross the coast most likely somewhere between Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast and Coolangatta on the Gold Coast, with a cyclone tracker map issued on Wednesday morning showing the cyclone moving directly over Brisbane.
The updated prediction suggests the strongest winds are expected to be experienced on the Gold Coast.
This is because, on the current forecast, the area is just to the south of the eye of the storm. Cyclones rotate clockwise, meaning the strongest onshore winds are underneath the eye.
Communities from Sandy Cape south to Grafton, including Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay and Ballina, were in the warning zone.
Potentially life-threatening floods
As well as high winds and storm surges, affected areas were preparing for intense rainfall that the bureau warned could lead to life-threatening flash flooding.
Alfred could dump up to a metre of rain over the elevated ranges and hinterland in parts of south-east Queensland and north-east NSW, according to Weatherzone’s Anthony Sharwood.
“That is an absolutely huge amount – for example, Brisbane’s entire annual rainfall is just over a metre,” Sharwood wrote.
On Wednesday morning, BoM was forecasting up to 400mm of rain for Brisbane between Thursday and Sunday and 430mm over the same period in the Gold Coast.
But Brisbane’s lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, said the amount of rain his city could expect was the “real variable here”.
“BoM has said that it is likely to be over 100mm a day,” he told ABC radio.
“Now that, in itself, will cause some flooding in certain areas, we get flooding in places like Stones Corner after about 70mm.
“But they’ve also said, that there’s a chance, although a slim chance … that we could get up to 700mm across three days.
“Now if that eventuates, then we are talking more like a 2022 flood situation.”
Which suburbs are at risk?
Schrinner said the areas “most at risk” were beachside communities – including Nudgee Beach and Brighton – and low-lying suburbs near rivers and creeks, including Windsor, Ashgrove, Morningside and Rocklea.
South of the city, Redland city council has issued warnings for a “very dangerous storm tide” for coastal areas.
Gold Coast city council is warning of destructive wind gusts and significant flooding.
Evacuation centres
Brisbane city council has set up a temporary refuge shelter at RNA showgrounds, with more evacuation centres to be announced.
Gold Coast city council has opened an evacuation centre at Runaway Bay and was to open two more at Nerang and Burleigh Waters.
Moreton Bay had two evacuation centres open as of Wednesday afternoon, one at Caboolture and another at Strathpine.
In NSW the minister for the north coast, Rose Jackson, said two evacuation centres were open at Lismore and Evans Head. A further seven locations around the mid-north coast had been identified as evacuation centre sites and were ready to be opened as needed, Jackson said.
Why is this a big deal?
Tropical cyclones are typically a tropical phenomenon and the fact that Alfred could reach the coastline hundreds of kilometres south of the tropics could be quite dangerous.
There is a huge population in the potential path of the cyclone of more than 4 million people, most of them living in and around Brisbane. And the Queensland capital is not particularly well-equipped to cope with a cyclone.
Residents of north Queensland and the Northern Territory are well-versed in preparing for cyclones; most have a cyclone kit with emergency supplies, and many buildings and homes are constructed to withstand strong winds.
Brisbane is also used to storms but doesn’t cope particularly well with them. The city has severely flooded three times (in 2011, 2017 and 2022) in the past 15 years. Predictions of 300mm to 600mm of rainfall in some areas, after a particularly wet summer, are worrying authorities.
It is unusual to be taking the threat of a cyclone this seriously, this far from it making landfall. But authorities are taking this very, very seriously.
When was the last cyclone in Brisbane?
It is rare – but not unheard of – for tropical cyclones to reach landfall south of the tropics.
The closest a cyclone track has come to Brisbane was in 1990 when Tropical Cyclone Nancy tracked erratically towards the Queensland capital before taking a southward turn just off the coastline and never making landfall.
Tropical Cyclone Wanda – the cause of Brisbane’s historic 1974 floods – crossed the coast near K’gari and Hervey Bay. A severe tropical cyclone crossed the coast near Tweed Heads in 1954.
It is far more common for a tropical cyclone to cross the coast north of the Tropic of Capricorn and return overland to the south-east as a destructive low storm. This occurred with Cyclone Debbie in 2017.
How should people prepare?
The Queensland government has a guide for residents to get ready for cyclones, which includes packing a kit with enough basic items for your family to use for three days at home without power.
Residents should make sure loose items are secured or put away.
How will travel and public transport be affected?
Authorities on Wednesday advised people not to travel from Thursday.
The Department of Transport and Main Roads issued an alert early on Wednesday afternoon advising that buses and trains would be suspending operations after the final service that evening.
TMR also said it expected damage to roads and bridges due to flooding as well as high winds.
“Members of the public should avoid travelling on roads over tomorrow [Thursday] and Friday as it will not be safe due to rain and wind conditions,” the alert read.
“Certain roads and bridges may be required to close, depending on conditions.”
The Brisbane regional harbour master issued a red alert for those on boats to seek/take shelter taking effect from 2pm Wednesday.
“This means that no vessels are permitted on the water until further notice,” the warning read.
There would be no public transport in Brisbane on Thursday and Friday “as a minimum”, Crisafulli announced Wednesday.
Brisbane city council suspended CityCat and ferry services from Monday night “until further notice” so the vessels could be moved to safety.
NSW and Queensland school closures
Hundreds of schools across south-east Queensland and northern NSW will be closed on Thursday and Friday.
Queensland’s premier, David Crisafulli, announced Wednesday morning that schools in his state would close from Thursday – the school closure dashboard flagged 663 state schools alone would close.
The NSW Department of Education’s website said on Thursday that 248 public schools were closed, as were 33 independent schools.
Tafes and universities – including University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland and Griffith – have closed their campuses.
‘Unprecedented’ sandbag collection
The prime minister said the federal government would deliver an additional 250,000 sandbags to the hundreds of thousands already picked up by residents looking to defend their homes from flood water.
People have lined up for hours over several days in what Brisbane’s lord mayor described as an “unprecedented demand for sandbags”.
“An incredible 74,000 sandbags were collected on Monday, which is the highest daily demand in Council history,” the mayor posted on social media.
Dams spilling but no pre-emptive releases
Several ungated dams and reservoirs in the south-east, including Cedar Pocket dam near Gympie and Wappa dam on the Sunshine Coast, were already overflowing, authorities said Tuesday morning.
“This is a normal part of operations at Seqwater,” a spokesperson said. “Once ungated dams reach 100% capacity, water will spill safely over the spillway and into the river or creek system it was built on, as it was designed to do.”
Gold Coast’s main drinking water source, the ungated Hinze Dam, was 99.4% full on Tuesday morning while the gated dams of Wivenhoe and Somerset at 86.7% and 80% respectively. The spokesperson said the latter two both had 100% flood storage compartments – designed to temporarily store flood water and later release it at a controlled rate – available.
Seqwater told the Courier-Mail on Monday it would not be pre-emptively releasing water.
Wivenhoe, the largest water storage body in the south-east and the main supply of water for Brisbane and the greater Ipswich area, was built after the city’s devastating 1974 floods, partly for flood mitigation.
But a commission of inquiry would later find that water was released at the wrong times during the deadly 2011 floods, contributing to the city’s inundation.
All Seqwater recreation sites were expected to be temporarily closed from Wednesday for public safety.
Theme parks close
Village Roadshow said its Gold Coast theme parks, including Movie World, Sea World and Wet’n’Wild would close from Wednesday to Friday. It said Sea World’s critical support team members would be working over this period “to ensure the welfare and wellbeing of the animals in our care”.
Dreamworld, White Water World and SkyPoint plan to reopen on Saturday, pending further weather assessments.
Read more of Guardian Australia’s Tropical Cyclone Alfred coverage:
