Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred as it happened: Storm finally makes landfall, heavy rainfall batters Brisbane, Gold Coast; body found as NSW Northern Rivers region begins to flood

If you’re just joining us - here’s the latest updates from this afternoon and this evening:

• Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred crossed the coast at Bribie Island before hitting the mainland at 9pm Queensland time.
• Brisbane is expected to experience strong winds until midnight tonight, as ex-tropical cyclone Alfred makes its slow journey to the mainland.
• The Bureau of Meteorology has advised Alfred is likely to track west across Australia over the next few days, bringing heavy rain.
• A body was found after a man was swept away by floodwaters in northern NSW on Friday. The driver, 61, was able to get out of the ute but emergency personnel were unable to reach him before he was swept away.
• Thirteen people are reported to have been injured in a crash involving Australian Defence Force vehicles near the flood-hit town of Lismore in northern NSW.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the incident as serious in a joint statement with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. Up to eight people are reported to be badly injured.

That’s all for our live coverage of this natural disaster, but we will be back soon to provide rolling coverage of ex-Cyclone Alfred.

To recap the key points:

• Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred finally made landfall on the mainland at 9pm Queensland time, bringing gale-force winds to Brisbane and surrounding areas.
• Brisbane is expected to experience continuing strong winds overnight.
• The Bureau of Meteorology has advised Alfred is likely to track west across Australia over the next few days, bringing heavy rain.
• A body was found after a man was swept away by floodwaters in northern NSW on Friday. The driver, 61, was able to get out of the ute but emergency personnel were unable to reach him before he was swept away.
• Thirteen people were injured in a crash involving Australian Defence Force vehicles near the flood-hit town of Lismore.
• Major flood warnings have been issued for the Lismore and Bellingen areas due to heavy and intense rainfall from Alfred.

Residents in Grafton, Ulmarra and Maclean have been warned that heavy and intense rain overnight is likely to lead to major flooding of the Clarence River.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued an urgent warning, stating major flooding is possibly from late Sunday morning in Grafton. Moderate flooding is likely at nearby Ulmarra on Sunday.

Major flooding is also occurring along the Bellinger River at Thora and moderate flooding is peaking at Bellingen.

The Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that ex-tropical cyclone Alfred has made landfall on the mainland after spending the majority of Saturday stalled off the Queensland coast.

The weather system made landfall, between Brisbane and Maroochydore, at 9pm Queensland time, according to the Bureau’s tracking map.

A tree lies fallen on the beachfront on the Gold Coast on Saturday.Credit: AP

Alfred made its long-awaited appearance after lingering off the coast for most of Saturday, moving at speeds as slow as 2km/h. As it hit the mainland, the tropical low was recording winds near its centre of 75km/h, with gusts of up to 110 kilometres per hour.

“Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred is expected to move inland more rapidly tonight while weakening,” the Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement.

“Damaging wind gusts are currently occurring about Moreton Bay and extending into some northern Brisbane suburbs due to a southeasterly wind surge interacting with Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

“These winds are expected to ease overnight as ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred moves further inland.”

If you’re just joining us - here’s the latest updates from this afternoon and this evening:

• Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred crossed the coast at Bribie Island before hitting the mainland at 9pm Queensland time.
• Brisbane is expected to experience strong winds until midnight tonight, as ex-tropical cyclone Alfred makes its slow journey to the mainland.
• The Bureau of Meteorology has advised Alfred is likely to track west across Australia over the next few days, bringing heavy rain.
• A body was found after a man was swept away by floodwaters in northern NSW on Friday. The driver, 61, was able to get out of the ute but emergency personnel were unable to reach him before he was swept away.
• Thirteen people are reported to have been injured in a crash involving Australian Defence Force vehicles near the flood-hit town of Lismore in northern NSW.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the incident as serious in a joint statement with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. Up to eight people are reported to be badly injured.

Senior BOM meteorologist Angus Hines says south-east Queensland will experience strong winds over the next few hours, as the “centre” of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred makes its agonisingly slow journey to the mainland.

The strong winds and rain will likely continue until midnight, he said.

“It looks like the edge of it is just making its way onto Bribie Island at the moment,” Hines said, shortly after 8pm in Queensland.

“An hour ago, the centre of it was still over the water.

“It’s all happening so slowly ... it’s not moving anywhere quickly.”

Windows are rattling and walls are creaking, as Brisbane is buffeted by wind gusts up to 96km/h and heavy rain tonight.

Brisbane residents have been somewhat surprised by the strength of the wind gusts and heavy rain hitting the city tonight after more “benign” weather during the day.

Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred is expected to make landfall around Bribie Island in the next hour or two.

A fallen tree blocked traffic in the Brisbane suburb of Norman Park on Saturday.Credit: Getty Images

“It really has picked up in the last hour or two hours,” the BOM’s senior meteorologist Angus Hines says.

“It’s coming hand-in-hand with a couple of bands of rain and it’s making it feel like conditions have really ramped up after being benign for much of the day.”

Redcliffe, on the city’s northern fringe, has been hit with wind gusts of 96km/h, while in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast they are between 60 and 70km/h.

“And we’re also seeing an extra squeeze in the wind between the ex-tropical cyclone and the high-pressure system below it,” Hines says.

A tropical cyclone is said to “make landfall” when the eye – the centre of the vortex – crosses to the mainland.

Now that Alfred has been downgraded to a tropical low, it technically doesn’t have an eye.

However, senior meteorologist Christie Johnson said that doesn’t matter for identifying landfall because it “does still have a centre of rotation”.

“It doesn’t have an eye in the classic sense that we would expect in a severe tropical cyclone, where there’s an eye wall of a certain cloud structure around it,” Johnson said.

Wild seas and beach erosion on the Gold Coast on Saturday morning.Credit: Dan Peled

“But obviously, as you can see, if you’re looking on the satellite loop or the radar loop, there is a circulation, and there is a centre of that circulation. That is what we’re tracking now when it comes to deciding whether it’s across the coast or not.”

In a strong cyclone, the eye wall is the band of the strongest winds, and then the centre of the eye is calm.

With a weaker cyclone or tropical low, there is no distinct calm in the centre, but the winds are still strongest close to the centre.

People in Brisbane are reporting the winds feel “absolutely nuts” right now and stronger than last night.

Alfred is now a tropical low rather than a cyclone, which reduces wind speeds. However, the vortex is a lot closer to Brisbane than last night.

The Australian Defence Force has released a statement about the crash involving two of its vehicles that has seen up to 36 personnel injured in Northern NSW, some of them seriously.

A Department of Defence spokesperson said the vehicles were providing community support to Lismore following ex-tropical cyclone Alfred.

“A number of ADF personnel have been injured,” they said.

“The welfare of ADF members and their families is a priority and Defence’s focus is on supporting those involved.

“Due to the developing nature of the incident, no further information will be available at this time, however Defence will provide further updates when possible.”

NSW Premier Chris Minns said the ADF personnel had come to the Northern Rivers to keep the community safe.

The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting ex-tropical cyclone Alfred will cross the coast at Bribie Island within the next two hours.

“Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred is slowly approaching the coast at Bribie Island, with a crossing expected in the next hour or two,” the BoM update at 8.45pm said.

Parts of Lismore were inundated with floodwater on Saturday.Credit: Danielle Smith

While Alfred was downgraded from a category 1 on Saturday morning, the tropical low has brought sustained and intense rainfall as the storm inches closer to the coast.

Residents on both sides of the Queensland-NSW border are confronting property damage, flooding and the loss of power.

We mentioned earlier that the bay islands were protecting Brisbane from the full force of the cyclone.

Alfred approached the coast as a category 2 tropical cyclone, became a category 1 system as it moved over the islands, and then weakened to a tropical low over Moreton Bay.

Senior meteorologist Christie Johnson explained there were “complex interactions” that caused a cyclone or ex-cyclone to weaken when it moved over land.

“One of them is that the system coming over land of any sort, even if it’s just the bay islands, reduces the amount of evaporation and the amount of energy that’s available to the system,” Johnson said.

“Pretty much any tropical cyclone will weaken once it comes over land because it basically loses its connection to its source of energy.”

As reported by this masthead, tropical cyclones require warm sea surface temperatures to form and be sustained.

A marine heatwave around Australia, a recurring feature of global warming, is one of the main reasons Alfred was able to remain a cyclone so far south.

Historical tropical cyclone activity across Australia between 1981 and 2017.Credit: Geoscience Australia