A warning for Tropical Cyclone Alfred is current for communities between Double Island in the north and down towards Yamba and Grafton in northern NSW with PREPARE TO EVACUATE orders along the coast from Tweed to Ballina.
As we move through Thursday the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says, ‘we’ll see gale force to damaging winds extending into coastal areas, as well as heavy rainfall and significant coastal erosion due to damaging surf and abnormally high tides continuing’.
‘By Thursday night impacts are expected to ramp up quite significantly.’
Dune breaches
The cyclone is approximately 300km off the coast to the east of Brisbane.
‘The cyclone has a rather chaotic motion with slight increases in speed and then occasionally completely stalling,’ explained Matthew Gray, who is a storm chaser and aspiring meteorologist who lives in the Byron Shire.
‘Although the current rainfall forecasts predict around half of what we saw in 2022 the giant tides and swell could severely impact low lying coastal areas.
‘A number of dune breaches have been reported and the ones I’m aware of are Currumbin and Brunswick Heads south wall. South wall had water running up the dunes at the same height as the south wall.
‘The cyclone will likely hit from late tonight into tomorrow morning and could hover around the Northern Rivers until early next week.’
The BOM say that the exact timing of landfall would depend on how quickly the cyclone approaches and then moves onto the coast.
‘Regardless of the exact timing of the landfall, we can expect to see significant impacts well before landfall for many hours, and then heading to the rest of Friday. Tropical Cyclone Alfred is expected to be downgraded back into a category one system and then a tropical low into the weekend,’ said the BOM.
Impacts are expected to extend into Saturday especially on the southern side which includes the areas of Tweed, Byron and Ballina.
‘The difference [between severe thunderstorms and a] tropical cyclone is that wind and rain are sustained over many hours [during a cyclone], and this can cause significant damage to property and vegetation, and, of course, cause life threatening flash flooding,’ said the BOM.
There have been winds up to 100km an hour at Cape Byron and at the centre of the cyclone winds are very strong.
Eye of the storm – don’t go outside
As the cyclone gets close to crossing onto land there will be a period of calmer winds right in the centre of the cyclone.
‘During this time, it will be very dangerous to go outside,’ said the BOM
‘Because as the system does move further away we will see those winds coming from the opposite direction very, very quickly.’
Rainfall high for Tweed, Byron, Ballina
The Tweed, Byron and Ballina shires are all on the southern flank of the cyclone when it makes landfall and ‘rainfall totals will be very high in the southern flank of that system,’ said the BOM.
‘Looking at Saturday morning we can expect to see widespread rainfall totals in excess of 100mm all the way from the Sunshine Coast and down towards the Mid-North Coast.’
However, the Gold Coast through to the Tweed, Byron, Ballina regions we may see those totals reach in excess of 400mm to 800mm, with higher isolated falls likely.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
