February 19, 2015JPEG

Northern Australia was battered by two potent tropical cyclones within six hours on the same day in February 2015. Cyclone Lam made landfall on the north-central coast near Milingimbi (about 400 kilometers east of Darwin) around 2 a.m. Australian central time on February 19. Cyclone Marcia made landfall on the east coast of Queensland near Rockhampton and Yeppoon around 8 a.m. local time on February 19.

At landfall, Lam had estimated wind speeds of approximately 165 kilometers (105 miles) per hour; Marcia came ashore with winds of 205 kilometers (125 miles) per hour. Marcia briefly reached category 5, only the sixth storm of that strength since records have been kept in Australia. According to meteorologist and blogger Jeff Masters, few major cyclones have made it so far south (around latitude 22°S) down the Australian coast.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this view of the two storms around midday on February 19, 2015. The image is a composite of satellite data from two Suomi NPP passes over the area.

As of February 20, no deaths had been reported from the storm, though damage assessments were still to be made in many of the remote towns. Water and power were lost in several areas hit by Lam. Power was knocked out by Marcia for at least 50,000 homes in Queensland.

1. References and Related Reading

2. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2015, February 19) Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Central Queensland towns devastated as storm tracks across state. Accessed February 20, 2015.
3. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2015, February 20) Tropical Cyclone Lam: Photos emerge from remote Milingnimbi community that bore the brunt of the storm. Accessed February 20, 2015.
4. Australian Bureau of Meteorology (2015, February 19) Newsroom. Accessed February 20, 2015.
5. Jeff Masters WunderBlog, via Weather Underground (2015, February 20) Two severe tropical cyclones make landfall in Australia on the same day. Accessed February 20, 2015.
6. Unisys Weather (2015) 2015 Hurricane/Tropical Cyclone Data for the Southern Pacific. Accessed February 20, 2015.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.