SPAC: NARELLE - Post-Tropical

[cycloneye]

VIsible loop.

[cycloneye]

 https://x.com/MassachusettsWx/status/2034454316296163343

[Cargill]

The luxury tropical resort of Lizard Island has been fully evacuated. Thankfully the forecast landfall area is extremely rugged and remote, and very few people live right on the coast. It's not like other areas of the South Pacific, the Torres Strait, and PNG - where you have strings of villages situated right along palm-fringed beaches, and being very much focused on seafood.

This area is quite steep, and has a large crocodile population, and few ways for people to make a living from the land or sea - there are good reasons why it has so few people. The small inland town of Coen is definitely under threat as well - it has a permanent population of around 320, and is a stopping-place for Cape York tourists during the dry season (May-October).

[Cargill]

Currently (at 1700 AEST Thursday) Narelle is forecast to make landfall as a Cat5 - there are gusts to 315 kph (195 mph) - it's a very strong storm by Australian East Coast standards.

[cycloneye]

[cycloneye]

 https://x.com/zoom_earth/status/2034573149811941451

[cycloneye]

 https://x.com/VortixWx/status/2034617832923705702

[cycloneye]

Notice at the end in 5 days off NW Australia,they increase the intensity and that is what the models show.

[sasha_B]

Cyclone Narelle is weakening now, but she may have peaked at or just above 135 kt (one-minute sustained), and at or below 920 hPa. (JTWC overwrote the best track point for 6z to 130 kt, incidentally, assuming the graph on cyclonicwx is accurate).
My rationale for 135 kt is the satellite presentation, which held for a considerable time at T6.9 (objective) and T6.5～7.0 (subjective). In fact, between 530～730z this morning, Narelle's eye temperature jumped over 9°C while remaining embedded in CMG or W, well-defined, and circular, more than 6 hours after an official satellite bulletin placing the storm's intensity at T6.5. While I'm not going to go so far as to say I think this was a SSHWS Category 5 or should have been designated as such - there would need to be more consistency for that - I think 130 kt is fair but conservative, & an increase of 5 kt to peak (pre-Queensland) intensity upon re-analysis is possible.

The 1430z satellite fix bulletin from the JTWC also gives a CI of 7.0 (FT 6.0):

F. T6.0/7.0/D1.0/24HRS STT: W0.5/03HRS
G. IR/EIR
H. REMARKS: 09A/PBO RAGGED EYE/ANMTN. LG EYE SURROUNDED BY W YIELDS
AN E# AND DT (NO EYE ADJUSTMENT) OF 6.0. MET YIELDS 6.5. PT YIELDS
6.0. DBO DT.

...which is also suggestive of a peak near 140 kt around 0319/0600z.

[Hurricane2022]

 https://x.com/i/status/2034509831240040722

[Hurricane2022]

 https://x.com/i/status/2034573149811941451


 https://x.com/i/status/2034647176656109603

[sasha_B]

This was a beautiful storm (although it's currently approaching landfall looking severely diminished already). One big question in my mind is whether Narelle will match or exceed this performance after exiting Australia's west coast next week, as some (but not all) models suggest that it could.

Also of note is the fact that Narelle almost certainly surpassed Horacio's maximum depth, making it the most intense cyclone of 2026 so far, despite not having been officially as strong. (Horacio's official central pressure from Meteo France was 935 hPa, while Narelle's per Aus. BoM was 925 hPa).

[Hurricane2022]

 https://x.com/i/status/2034754375428497740

[cycloneye]

Narelle will be a cat 3-4 again once it emerges NW Australia.

[cycloneye]

 https://x.com/BOM_au/status/2034809285172240697

[cycloneye]

Look at the lightning,

 https://x.com/Ben_Domensino/status/2034827149920936165

[sasha_B]

I suspect that Narelle made landfall with MSW of 115～120 kts, consistent with the JTWC's operational best track. What remains to be seen is the extent to which its structure will remain intact, across the peninsula and after its second landfall. There was clearly a brief attempt at reintensification between 1800z yesterday and 0000z today, after a 12-hour period of substantial weakening, but it remains to be seen whether the resilient core of this storm will survive (or reconstitute itself) late today/early tomorrow. Forward velocity, vertical alignment, and the particular angle of Narelle's westward trajectory will all play a part in whether it lives up to the high expectations of the GFS/HWRF solutions. I'm not entirely confident that it will, given the disruption that it suffered on approach to Queensland, but we'll see.

[Cargill]

In 1978, Cyclone Alby tracked all the way down the Western Australia west coast, and smacked into the coastal town of Busselton (at 33.7S), and caused quite a bit of damage. Fairly rare for Australian cyclones to continue outside the tropics, unlike in the US, but it does occasionally occur.

And sometimes, these same systems head east as strong low-pressure systems, bringing major storms and big seas to Adelaide, Melbourne, and even Sydney. So one storm starting in the Solomons can travel quite a way around the continent.

[cycloneye]

[cycloneye]

Reorganizing in the Gulf of Carpenteria.