{"id":196369,"date":"2025-11-23T18:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/196369\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T18:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:06:11","slug":"severe-tropical-cyclone-fina-moves-towards-wa-as-darwin-surveys-the-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/196369\/","title":{"rendered":"Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina moves towards WA as Darwin surveys the damage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina has passed Darwin at category three strength, with the weather system’s gale-force winds leaving a path of destruction as it continues west into the ocean.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fina was the Northern Territory’s strongest cyclone to pass Darwin since the deadly Cyclone Tracy in 1974<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The system was also more powerful than Cyclone Marcus, which passed Darwin as a category two in 2018.<\/p>\n

Follow our live blog to keep up-to-date on Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now tracking west-south-west<\/a>, Severe TC Fina is picking up strength over the Timor Sea and is expected to move over the top of Western Australia in the coming days.<\/p>\n

A cyclone warning was this morning in place for the central and western Tiwi Islands and Cape Hotham to Wadeye, including Darwin, Pirlangimpi, Milikapiti, Wurrumiyanga and Wadeye.<\/p>\n

A cyclone watch was active from Wadeye in the NT to Troughton Island in WA, including Kalumburu.<\/p>\n

According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM)\u00a07:30am update, sustained winds near the centre of the cyclone reached 150 kilometres per hour this morning and Fina produced wind gusts up to 205km\/h.<\/p>\n

BOM said “destructive wind gusts” of up to 155km\/h could continue impacting coastal areas of the Cox Peninsula, including Dundee Beach in the coming hours, while gales were likely about coastal areas south-west of Darwin to Daly River Mouth.<\/p>\n

Heavy to locally intense rainfall, with the potential to lead to flash flooding, is expected to continue around Darwin and south-west to Daly River Mouth this morning.<\/p>\n

The BOM has said “conditions are forecast to ease” through Sunday, after the worst of the damaging winds lasted from about 6pm to about midnight on Saturday.<\/p>\n

But Fina could intensify to a category four from this afternoon, according to BOM’s latest cyclone track map.<\/p>\n

What is the damage?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A number of Top End suburbs lost power overnight including parts of Darwin, Palmerston, some rural areas and the Tiwi Islands.<\/p>\n

According to Power and Water Corporation, there were still five unplanned outages as of this morning, but crews had paused repairs overnight for safety reasons.<\/p>\n

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Videos showed the cyclone’s destructive power, ripping a powerline apart and causing a small explosion of sparks.<\/p>\n

Powerful winds also brought trees down across the city.<\/p>\n

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A section of roofing partially collapsed on the first floor of Royal Darwin Hospital<\/a> overnight, with reports of water inside the building.<\/p>\n

No-one was injured.<\/p>\n

\"Bricks<\/p>\n

Roofing partially collapsed on the first floor of RDH as a result of the wild weather. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Initial\u00a0reports said the theatre and the intensive care unit\u00a0were affected by the incident, but incident controller Emma Carter said the Department of Health confirmed “they hadn’t been impacted”.<\/p>\n

NT Health Minister Steve Edgington said the NT Health chief executive had engineers on-site assessing the structural integrity of the damaged area.<\/p>\n

Federal Minister for Emergency Management Kristy McBain said support would be available to Territorians impacted by the extreme weather event.<\/p>\n

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The minister said Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel were on stand-by to help with the clean-up efforts, and financial assistance would be available to support local governments and communities as they recover.<\/p>\n

Ms McBain said the federal government was working with the NT government to provide support, including any requests for funding from the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina has passed Darwin at category three strength, with the weather system’s gale-force winds leaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[109147,100917,109152,88266,109146,109144,109149,109151,27106,18,440,109145,19,17,44133,44132,109148,133,109142,109150,109143],"class_list":["post-196369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-bom","tag-bureau-of-meteorology","tag-cape-hotham","tag-cyclone","tag-cyclone-damage","tag-cyclone-fina","tag-cyclone-nt","tag-damage-from-cyclone","tag-darwin","tag-eire","tag-environment","tag-fina","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-northern-territory","tag-nt","tag-nt-cyclone","tag-science","tag-severe-tropical-cyclone-fina","tag-tropical-cyclone","tag-tropical-cyclone-fina"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115600345335819632","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}