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| Tropical Cyclone Alfred on 4 March 2025. |
Peter Strempel, 3 March 2025
Monday, 3 March 2025
It seems history is in the making around me.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology forecasts that Tropical (TC) Cyclone Alfred, currently a Category 1 system will intensify to Category 2 today or tomorrow.
Category 1: Damaging winds. Negligible house damage. Damage to some crops, trees and caravans. Craft may drag moorings. Maximum mean wind speed 63–88 km/h. Typical strongest gust is up to 125 km/h. Category 2: Destructive winds. Minor house damage. Significant damage to signs, trees and caravans. Heavy damage to some crops. Risk of power failure. Small craft may break moorings. Maximum mean wind speed 89–117 km/h. Typical strongest gust 125–164 km/h.
While I wasn’t paying attention, a weather system to the east, and another from the south will divert the path of the cyclone to the west, meaning towards the coast around Brisbane.
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| Tropical Cyclone Alfred on 3 March 2025. |
Tuesday, 4 March, 2025
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| Tropical Cyclone Alfred path and prediction, 4 March 2025. |
Today the Police and State Government made use of the public address system (by mobile phone) to warn residents: clean up loose trash on your properties, clear gutters, batten down the hatches. The immediate effect was panic buying in supermarkets. Still water was the first to go. Then toilet paper, just like during the floods in 2022. Do people still expect an epidemic of diarrhoea? To build rafts from toilet paper rolls? Or maybe just to profiteer by selling rolls at usurious prices to unfortunates in some sort of post-apocalyptic aftermath?
For me it means a big day of cooking today, to turn freezer meat and veg into cooked meals, back into the freezer. If the power fails, a cooked meal will be good for maybe a day, whereas thawed, raw meat would probably be quite inedible. I have some tinned food, and dry goods to last me a few days. If a state of emergency lasts longer than that, I won’t be the only one in serious trouble.
Charging all devices, including a torch I bought some time ago for this purpose (blackouts), and keeping them at 100% charge.
My sole experience thus far with cyclones was years ago, when Cyclone Naomi crossed the West Australian coast about 100km south of Broome, where I was staying, on 17 December 1993. That was a show. Big hulking 4WDs floating serenely past outside. Howling winds and torrential rains. But Naomi was a bigger storm than Alfred—a twin system. And Broome had many purpose built houses to withstand tropical storms, including the one in which I weathered the storm, with an ice filled esky and plenty of beer.
There’s a good chance this will all turn out to be a storm in a teacup. The cyclone could easily fizz out into a tropical low, or hit much further north (not that this would be much comfort to Sunshine Coast residents). Still, a cyclone this far south is historic. And maybe not in a good way.
This morning all is calm, and only scattered patches of rain show on the rain radar. The forecast is for 31C with showers later in the day. A little hotter than I’d like this time of year, but I think Autumn is a thing of the past, with summer now stretching all the way from November to May.
Wednesday, 5 March 2025
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| Tropical Cyclone Alfred path and forecast, 5 March 2025. |
This morning there are reports of supermarket shelves around the city and SE Queensland being stripped in panic buying frenzies. My local shops certainly mirrored that trend. People are stupid and selfish. It's bad weather, not the end of the world, and hoarding goods deprives people with less ability to bulk-buy of necessities.
Far from the mythical larrikin, knock-about blokes and glowing sheilas our politicians like to refer to, they have turned us into selfish, greedy, narrow-minded Americans.
If the power really goes out for days, as a panic-purveying media forecasts for 4 million people, there will be emergency centres to turn to. My closest one is a stiff 30 minute walk. Maybe a couple of hours if roads are flooded.
The reality is that power cuts are likely, but on a much smaller scale than suggested by sensationalist media workers. And people in more remote suburbs or regions will be the hardest hit: long distances make infrastructure more expensive and labour intensive to repair. The harsh reality is that restoring power to a million people with ten crews takes priority over restoring power to 50,000 people with 30 crews.
On my morning walk I detected an ever so slight, almost indefinable change in the weather. Birds were going nuts, streaking through the skies with great urgency and along apparently erratic trajectories. The stillness between gusts of wind was quite unsettling.
Later on I saw that Coles at Merthyr Village (or maybe the whole body corporate) had brought in the generators and pumps used belatedly after the 2020 floods had submerged the underground carpark and knocked out the power sub-station that had been housed there (you can almost hear the architect of the place brush off the risk assessment: ‘nah, that sort of a flood will never happen’). That sub-station is now off the ground, but the car park will flood if we really do get a meter of water in a day or so. And Coles must be loving the panic buying: empty shelves and jacked prices for everything remotely in demand.
All the obvious stuff was out of stock: dairy, dairy substitutes, canned meals and other canned goods. Fresh fruit and veg was very thin on the ground, and mostly looked like bruised stock. Even deli and fresh meat shelves were looking bare.
Do people think we are about to be invaded? What utter fuckwits those panic buyers are.
***
With a bit of time to investigate, I realized maybe this weather event is not really as historic as I thought. Just very unusual within my lifetime.
Sunshine Coast News: ‘Cyclone Wanda, which crossed the coast near Maryborough at the end of January 1974, was more famous for flooding Brisbane than for the 50-knot winds she hurled down the coast from Tewantin to Caloundra.’
Maryborough is 219 km to the north of Brisbane.
Cyclone Annie crossed the coast at Maroochydore on 1 January 1963. Maroochydore is 91.5 km north of Brisbane.
The ABC reported that an ‘unnamed cyclone’ that crossed the coast at Coolangatta on 20 February 1954 created a ‘scale of damage and loss of life earned it the title “the Great Gold Coast Cyclone”’, causing extensive damage along its path in the Coral Sea as far north as Buderim. Buderim is 87 km north of Brisbane, while Coolangatta is 103km to the south. The ABC report said Brisbane itself experienced gusts of up to 100km/h at that time, being at the periphery of the cyclone’s passing.
Estimates today are that TC Alfred will cross the coast south of Brisbane, perhaps even as far south as northern NSW. But the path is speculative.
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| Tropical Cyclone Alfred on 5 March 2025. |
I have now rearranged my balcony to bring inside smaller items, and to move the furniture against the wall to prevent anything becoming a sail in high winds.
Estimates are that the cyclone will cross the coast late tomorrow night. The ABC has put together a reasonable summary of the history and path of TC Alfred here.
***
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli told Gold Coast media that the cyclone was expected to cross the coast in the middle of the night, and at high tide, so people in evacuation zones shouldn’t leave their arrangements until the last minute. I guess there are always people who won’t be told.
19:00
The latest tracking map, posted 17:46, suggests landfall pretty much on top of Brisbane again. Best guesses that will change in the next 24 hours.
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| TC Alfred tracking and forecast map, 5 March 2025, 17:46. |
The enhanced satellite image is mesmerizing (the source is animated). A friend said it is like a mouse watching a cat. That seems about right.
Thursday, 6 March, 2025
Late last night the cyclone stalled on its westward path, slowing down to a crawl, and delaying its expected arrival over Brisbane for some hours; instead of the wee hours of Friday, it’s now expected Friday afternoon, with a projected path taking it directly over Brisbane city.
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| TC Alfred path and projection 2025 03 06 as at 05:48. |
I made a mad dash to the local Coles on opening, calculating that an overnight delivery would not have had a chance to be looted by panic buyers. My intention was to go for some tea candles (I have an old tea candle lamp), and some long life milk.
The roads were wet and mostly devoid of traffic. Debris from trees on the ground suggests high winds while I slept. But it’s quite still now.
Sure enough, the overnight deliveries were still unpillaged, though hardly impressive. I got some long life milk, but tea candles were out of stock. So I bought ordinary household candles, which I can cut into thirds (to fit the lamp) if necessary.
It’s just a waiting game now.
Media catastrophizers have begun predicting even worse fallout than had the cyclone arrived as expected, due to longer peripheral exposure to high winds and high waves in coastal regions. We’ll see.
At this stage, with TC Alfred still about 250 clicks off the coast, anything could happen, including that it blows itself out, veers off course dramatically, or speeds up again. It all depends on how other weather systems around it affect its path (systems from the west push eastwards, and so on), and how ocean temperatures affect its intensity (warm water can increase intensity, and shallow water near the cost is warmer than deep water).
It is a sign of the times that the Guardian offered the following advice this morning:
Have a plan for getting truthful information before, during and after the cyclone.
Rely on the information provided by official sources, as they will tell you when it’s too late to evacuate or when it’s safe to come out. This is highly context-specific and will depend on where you are located.
Get advice where possible from your local council’s disaster dashboard (most councils have one).
It should provide information such as where to get sandbags, which roads are closed (which can affect your evacuation plan) and evacuation centre openings and locations.
Anyone who monitors social media will see how many amateur meteorologists and maps are out there, but these are often not the best source. Always rely on official sources rather than hearsay, trending footage or amateur “experts”.
Perhaps we ought to hope, however guiltily, for a thinning out in the shallow end of the gene pool. Suspicious silence from the Coalition’s climate-change-denialism cheersquad, though. I suppose LNP leader Peter Dutton’s seat is in Brisbane, so the usual run of balderdash about increasing frequency of natural disasters might be a bad move prior to a looming federal election.
This from the ABC around noon, explaining the cyclone’s erratic path:
Tropical Cyclone Alfred's movements in recent days have been dependent on other weather systems within the Australian region.
As a category 2 tropical cyclone, Alfred is less-vertically developed compared to strong tropical cyclones of severe category 3 and above. As such, it has not been able to steer on its own accord, but rather is dependent on winds associated with other weather systems for its movement.
While over the Coral Sea, Alfred was initially steered towards the south-east by an upper-atmospheric trough. This continued until the tropical cyclone reached an area of high pressure, causing it to slow down, and turn westwards well off the coast of Brisbane earlier this week.
This area of high pressure has since become slow-moving, causing Alfred to become cradled and meander over open waters last night.
From tomorrow, this area of high pressure will get a bit of a move on, and in doing so nudge Alfred back towards the coast, where crossing is currently expected early on Saturday morning.
At just after two I noticed there are no birds in the usually busy airways around here. No chirping. No flying insects. And the people in the unit block across the road are unloading a generator to pump water out of their underground parking space. It has begun to rain. Not hard. But probably persistently from now on.
18:30
SE Queensland is at a virtual stand-still, with many shops and offices shut as public transport cancellations make it hard for people to get to and from work, and public advice is to avoid travel by any other means too.
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Japanese weather satellite Himiwari-9 image of TC Alfred on 6 March 2025. |
But, in a turn of weather, the cyclone’s westward trajectory has slowed to a crawl. This morning’s prediction of a Friday afternoon to evening landfall is now amended to a Saturday morning landfall, and possibly as a category 1 weather system, as TC Alfred spends its fury on coastal areas from now until Saturday. The likely point at which it will cross the coast is no again north of Brisbane, but that point could be anywhere within 100 km either way.
Good news for me. Not so good news for people east and south of here. And longer too, to put up with travel and logistics interruptions (SE Queensland supermarkets are re-supplied mainly by road transport from as far away as Sydney and Melbourne, with major roads running parallel and close to the coast).
It’s gloomy outside, with drizzle, but hardly unusual weather for this time of year. But there is still that silence from birds that is quite unusual where I live.
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The Bureau of Meteorology’s tracking map and predictions for |
While I’m beginning to think that the main even will be far less severe than anticipated in Brisbane itself, the ABC commented differently earlier today:
Tropical Cyclone Alfred is destined to become one of the most significant weather events in Australia's recent history, bringing a multitude of severe weather across several days.
Already this week, as Alfred gathered steam offshore, it has pounded the coast with waves in excess of 12 metres, and has soaked parts of the Gold Coast, Northern Rivers and Mid North Coast with well over 100 millimetres of rain.
As of 11am Thursday, Alfred was still more than 200 kilometres offshore and moving slowly at less than 10 kilometres per hour.
I don’t know what a ‘multitude of severe weather’ might be, but I know that for at least 15 years now, weather events have become increasingly severe, and planned responses hardly more sophisticated than switching from business as usual directly to disaster mode. Political mobilization of logistical resources is slow and clumsy, with far too much time spent arse-kissing and ensuring media exposure for all the giant egos. We might be better served by a bureaucrat-driven and staged effort, merely rubber stamped by the relevant politicians. On the other hand, there seem to be a large number of people who refuse to take reality seriously, endangering not just themselves, but all those around their reckless behaviours, which range from panic buying to dangerous driving, and from neglect of preparing their properties (making them dangerous to their neighbours), to spreading dis/misinformation and outright lies.
I was most amused by this political analysis from the ABC:
Failing to adequately respond to a disaster can be deadly for political leaders.
Even just the prospect of acting in a partisan way during these moments can irk voters, as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton astutely observed earlier this week.
With Cyclone Alfred readying a path not just for the mainland but Dutton’s own Queensland electorate, now was not the time for an election, he argued.
“I think the prime minister would have a tin ear to do that,” he told Radio 4BC on Wednesday morning.
“People probably want from their prime minister governing not campaigning, at a time like this.”
The curious part of Dutton’s assessment is that the evening before he was nowhere near his electorate.
Rather, as was first revealed by the Australian Financial Review, Dutton was the featured guest of businessman Justin Hemmes for a political fundraiser inside his Sydney harbourside mansion.
Dutton had started his day in Queensland, where he held a morning press conference outside the state’s emergency management centre after a briefing from the premier and police.
He then headed to Sydney for a community event and later to the hospitality king’s historic mansion for the fundraiser.
By Wednesday, he was back in Queensland and pre-recorded an interview with Sky News from his home north of Brisbane.
The ABC has confirmed Dutton was due at a lunch event in Melbourne on Thursday but cancelled his attendance.
Guardian Australia on Thursday also revealed Dutton was due at a fundraiser at the Melbourne headquarters of Macquarie Bank on Wednesday night but it was cancelled at the last minute without explanation.
Questions from ABC News to Dutton’s office remained unanswered at the time of publication.
When asked about Dutton’s fundraiser attendance, fellow Queenslander Jim Chalmers said it would be “disappointing”.
The treasurer told 4BC he was reluctant to “weigh into it enthusiastically” because “now’s not the time for politics”.
“I assure all your listeners and I assure you that our focus has been on the disaster,” he said.
“I hope his has been as well, because we all need all shoulders to the wheel.”
It’s true that Dutton has not much of a rôle to play in preparing for the cyclone, except, perhaps, in the morale boosting department. Perhaps he is due some credit for keeping the rabid part of his Coalition quiet when they might be tempted to talk ‘wrath of god for sinfulness’ or climate change denialism. But travelling to fund-raisers clearly reveals his priorities, even if those priorities are entirely rational. It’s about the appearance of the thing, not its reality.
Jim Chalmers talking politics while denying that he’s doing so is just risible. Do any of those characters think we don’t all know that they’re politicians, and playing at politics morning, noon, and night?
And what does he mean by ‘shoulders to the wheel’? What possible rôle is there for Dutton in the federal end of disaster preparation and amelioration? Surely the government keeps everyone on the other side well away from any useful function. Though I privately believe it might have been a PR coup to invite Dutton to assume some meaningless part, with all media spotlights, to exploit the idea of the ALP’s good will, and then poke fun at Dutton’s refusal or inevitable insignificance.
Friday, 7 March 2025
Alfred has done it again: another loop doubling back on itself, slowing it’s estimated path towards the Queensland coast once more. The new estimated landfall time is around 03:00 on Saturday (tomorrow) at Redcliffe, 27km north of Brisbane. And it is forecast to have reduced to a category 1 weather system by then.
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| Bureau of Meteorology track and forecast map for TC Alfred at 02:56 on 7 March 2025. |
In the early hours today, The ABC reported:
Meanwhile, Energex, the electricity supplier for Queensland, is reporting widespread disruption to its power network on the Gold Coast.
More than 20,000 customers were without power as of 1:45am, of which more than 17,500 were on the Gold Coast.
The Energex outage finder says damage from the cyclone is the cause of many of the unplanned outages, affecting large parts of the Gold Coast hinterland, parts of Tweed Heads and Burleigh Waters.
A little later, it also reported 10,000 homes in NSW without power, and projections are for the majority of the expected rainfall coming to affect NSW (The Queensland NSW border is about 90km south of Brisbane). The ABC again:
The most recent BOM update, just before 2am, says people in the warning area, between Double Island Point in Qld and Grafton in NSW, should be aware of the following hazards:
heavy rainfall developing over southeast Qld and northeastern NSW
heavy to locally intense rainfall which may lead to dangerous and life-threatening flash flooding, which will occur near and south of the cyclone centre as Alfred approaches and crosses the coast.
the BOM warns that because Alfred is a slow-moving system, there is a very high risk of significant impacts due to widespread heavy rainfall over the coming days.
a dangerous storm tide for the coastal foreshore.
abnormally high tides are likely to continue causing minor flooding between Cape Moreton and Yamba.
damaging surf leading to significant beach erosion.
gales with damaging wind gusts up to 120 kilometres an hour are developing near the coast between Cape Moreton and Cape Byron.
gales with damaging wind gusts up to 120 kilometres an hour are expected to develop across the remaining southeast Queensland and northeastern NSW coastal and island communities through Friday morning.
destructive wind gusts of up to 155 kilometres an hour may develop about coastal and island locations near, and to the south of, the cyclone centre.
Right now (05:05) in Brisbane, New Farm, there are relatively minor wind gusts. It is raining, but not heavily. It’s 21oC, 89% humidity, heading for a top of 25 degrees for today. So far this is not very unusual weather for me. But many thousands of others not so far away are having quite a different experience.
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| Rain radar image around 04:20 on 7 March 2025. |
19:00
There’s a sense of unreality about all this, with stories of thousands of homes being without power and damaging winds wreaking havoc … but all south of here. The latest tracking map (below) says it all. The pale pink area is the bad weather around the more solid pink storm. The red outline is the boundary of damaging gales pushed along ahead of the storm. None of it has reached Brisbane, which is experiencing occasional gusty showers, but not much else.
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| TC Alfred tracking and predictive map, 7 March 2025, 17:56. |
Offices and shops are mostly shut; suspension of all public transport makes it difficult for workers to get to work. Traffic is light. The birds are back, but not in the teeming throngs we usually see here. The brush turkey colony across the road looks to be hunkered down rather than foraging.
TC Alfred is inching along at a serene pace, and is now expected to make landfall in the small hours overnight, but as a category 1 weather system, which isn’t really a cyclone at all any more.
By mid-day tomorrow it will have passed inland, and Brisbane will be in its tail, where there’s expected to be quite a bit of rain. But even that is speculative; the storm might have spent much its fury to the south by then.
8 March 2025: 03: 45
The images say it all better than I can. The part of Brisbane I live in seems to have avoided serious storm fallout altogether.
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| TC Alfred track map on 8 March 2025 at 04:15. |
Landfall as a tropical low well north of the city. Rain here, and wind gusts, but nothing remotely exciting.
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| Bureau of Meteorology rain radar 0n 8 March 2025 at 04:24. |
It’s quite calm outside right now, with only drizzle. The rain radar suggests there will be sustained rain later, but those colours indicate only light to moderate downpours.
The news headlines say a quarter of a million homes in Queensland and NSW are without power this morning. I’m not among them. But any outage now will take some time to address with this many incidents.
So far I have been very lucky. And it may be that the worst experience I will have had of TC Alfred is the idiotic behaviour of panic buyers, closed shops, and a bit of survivors’ guilt for being so unscathed while so many are doing it tough.
We have two days of sustained rain ahead of us, which will mean flooding in places, but even there, it seems, New Farm is to be spared the kind of deluge we had before the 2022 floods.
Fingers crossed.
10:23
Apart for a few days of heavy rain, it’s all over. TC Alfred is now just a low pressure weather system moving inland. Flooding is still a risk, but storm damage has either been done, of won’t now happen.
Of course everything is still shut, and public transport is still not running. So it will be a sedate weekend at home. Not that this is any great burden.
9 March 2025
Last night I went to be bed hoping the power would stay on because wind was picking up and rain became heavier. This morning all was as well as I could expect, with driving rain continuing through the night, but power still not interrupted in this part of Brisbane. Almost 300,000 homes from northern NSW to Brisbane weren’t so lucky.
The cyclone is no more, having reduced in intensity to a tropical low, but the rain will continue for days, and brings with it the risk of flash flooding, meaning sudden and treacherous, with fast flowing water capable of sweeping away even heavy vehicles.
All that water coming down has to go somewhere, and the ground can’t soak up this much rain in such a short space of time. The rain further inland will come back to us (in Brisbane) by flowing from tributaries back into the Brisbane River, which could well burst its banks and contribute to localized flooding.
For now I’ll be quite content if the power stays on. The way it hasn't for about 300,000 homes between here and northern NSW.
Translink, the Brisbane public transport operator, reports that most buses will return to service today, but trains and ferries remain suspended. As far as I can tell, most retailers remain shut for today, though there may be local exceptions, as there were yesterday.
The original plan, before Alfred slowed down on 6 March, was for a resumption of all services as normal from tomorrow, Monday, 10 March. That will now depend on localized flooding and any further damage by gales.
I’m still well supplied with food (and toilet paper, which I last bought about two weeks ago now, as part of pre-storm, pre-panic-buying grocery shopping). I’m out of fresh milk and into my supply of long life. No pressing need for anything for another week, but fresh fruit and veg would be nice to have. And maybe some smallgoods. I let my fridge slowly empty, reducing the risk of losing too much food to a longer power cut.
Buckets of water remain filled in my bathroom, for flushing the toilet should water supply be lost. An old phone and power bank are on permanent charge in case the power goes off for more than a day. My outdoor furniture is still stacked and strapped up close to the wall, ensuring none of the pieces become flying debris in strong wind. I don’t think any of those precautions need to be lifted just yet.
In the rest of the country, this cyclone is slowly fading from memory. In WA, the ALP very comfortably won yesterday’s state election, which is no solace for the federal coalition, facing an election in April or May. Elsewhere, corruption, crime and sport appear to dominate the headlines. Life goes on, and our little corner of a troubled planet isn’t worth too much attention.
10 March 2025
I don't have the energy to write more. The ABC says this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-09/power-out-no-phone-reception-gold-coast-ex-cyclone-alfred/105029332
11 March 2025
While the skies remain overcast, threatening showers that have been mercifully absent where I am, the ground is drying out and the risk of post-event floods is receding here. So this chapter is now closed.