Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle is rapidly intensifying off the coast of Western Australia, fueled by record-high sea surface temperatures linked to global heating. The massive storm system is forecast to pummel remote coastal towns with devastating wind gusts of up to 275 km/h. Exmouth is bracing for severe impacts later on Thursday. The system is then projected to make a direct landfall as a severe Category 3 storm over the tourism town of Denham in the world heritage-listed Shark Bay on Friday night.
Major infrastructure across the state is already shutting down. Authorities suspended operations at the Port Hedland Airport and major shipping ports in Dampier and Ashburton. The Bureau of Meteorology is extensively tracking the system as it approaches the coast.
The storm is executing an extraordinarily rare 5,500-kilometer cross-country journey. Narelle is the first storm system in 20 years to make landfall in three separate Australian states and territories. It began its destructive run in the Coral Sea before slamming into far north Queensland on March 20 as a high-end Category 4 storm packing 195 km/h sustained winds.
Here is the vorticity and wind shear maps for western and eastern Australia over the past 5 days and it is showing the tracks of both our power and large cyclone #Narelle and our now subtropical cyclone 28p #severewx #wxtwitter #tropicswx #BREAKING #tropicalupdate #australia pic.twitter.com/NiAMDvtOma
— severewxguy (@weathermandan10) March 26, 2026
It subsequently crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria to strike the Northern Territory on March 21 as a Category 3 system. The storm dumped hundreds of millimeters of rain. This triggered major flooding and forced evacuations in Katherine and the Daly River region, before reforming over the Indian Ocean.
Climate scientists note the cyclone’s unprecedented endurance is a direct result of ocean waters measuring 1 to 2 degrees Celsius above average. These extreme temperatures provided the intense convection necessary for the storm to survive and regenerate across a vast expanse of the continent. The event highlights a growing crisis in global weather patterns.