Tropical Cyclone Seroja Devastates Australian Town

Climate

A small tourist town has borne the brunt of a cyclone which swept across the West Australian coast. ABC News (Australia) / YouTube

Tropical Cyclone Seroja slammed into the Western Australian town of Kalbarri Sunday as a Category 3 storm before grinding a more-than 600-mile path across the country’s Southwest.


About 70% of the buildings in Kalbarri were damaged and tens of thousands are without power by winds gusting over 100 miles per hour. Climate change, caused by humans’ extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, is making cyclonic storms more extreme by increasing air and ocean temperatures, which effectively supercharges the storms.

“You just thought, this is it. I would have thought that when we opened the door, that there would be nothing around us except that roof,” Kalbarri resident Debbie Major told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “We are a small town. Half of it has been flattened.” Seroja devastated regions of Indonesia and Timor-Leste last week, where it triggered deadly flash floods and landslides.

For a deeper dive:

BBC, The Washington Post, AU News, ABC AU, The Guardian (Video); Climate Signals background: Cyclonic storms

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