Australia's most powerful tropical cyclone in eight years has lashed its northwest coast with winds gusting to an apparently record of 289 kilometers 180 miles per hour Friday, but skirted larger population centers and resulted in no immediate reports of injuries.
Cyclone Ilsa entered the Pilbara coast of Western Australia as a Category 5 storm, the most severe, but weakened to Category 2 as it moved inland, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said.
damage was being assessed in the path of Ilsa, who made landfall in the early hours of the early mornings 150 kilometers north of the iron ore export town of Port Hedland in the rural area of Pardoo.
The population of Pardoo had 47 at the latest census, and the Pardoo Roadhouse and Tavern was destroyed. The two owners stayed throughout the storm and were unharmed, emergency officials said.
The fire department has had a pretty uncomfortable, challenging night, said Department of Fire and Emergency Services Superintendent Peter McCarthy.
Acting Minister Sue Ellery, acting emergency services minister, described the storm damage as fairly minimal. Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm said Ilsa had travelled toward Pardoo following tracking from the Indian Ocean toward Port Hedland, the world's biggest bulk export port that sends Australian iron ore around the globe. The largest city in the Pilbara is Port Hedland, with 16,000 residents.
Before the storm hit, the city's docks were cleared of ships, including iron ore carriers.
Residents in Port Hedland feel like they have dodged a bullet, Mr Klemm said. The damage caused by a Category 5 cyclone would have resulted in substantial damage to Port Hedland. Ilsa appears to have broken an Australian record with wind gusts in its path, which it recorded at bedout Island off the Pilbara coast before the island's measuring equipment stopped working, weather bureau manager Todd Smith said. It was not clear whether power was cut or the equipment malfunctioned.
We're going to do some checks on the data there, but it s likely that that will go down as the strongest wind gusts ever recorded by the bureau s equipment in Australia.
The last Category 5 storm to cross the Australian coast was Cyclone Marcia in 2015, which had an average winds exceeding 200 kph 124 mph, with gusts exceeding 280 kph 174 mph. Marcia caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to Queensland's east coast state.