Tropical cyclone Zelia made landfall in Western Australia about 30 miles east of Port Hedland at 11:30 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 13, which was 12:30 p.m. local time Feb. 14. At landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center rated Zelia as a Category 4 storm with 130 mph (209 km/h) winds. Port Hedland recorded a peak wind gust of 75 mph, and Zelia dumped 17.16 inches (44 cm) of rain over a 48-hour period at Pardoo Station. Fortunately, the eyewall of the storm missed Port Hedland (pop. 15,000), and Zelia mainly affected sparsely populated areas. Zelia is Earth’s first major tropical cyclone to make landfall in 2025.
Tropical Cyclone #Zelia over the last 2 and a half days with its rapid intensification, long stall and eyewall replacement cycles before final landfall near the De Grey River mouth, Western Australia today #CycloneZelia pic.twitter.com/HxqOYEdDCS
— YouStorm (@YouStormorg) February 14, 2025
A rare Cat 4 landfall for Australia
Since 1961, Australia’s mainland has been hit by 18 other storms rated Category 4 or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. The strongest hurricane on record to hit mainland Australia (and the most recent major hurricane to hit the country) was Ilsa of April 2023, which hit a lightly populated area about 50 miles east of Port Hedland as a Cat 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with 155 mph (250 km/h) winds and a central pressure of 924 mb.
There are only three Cat 5s on the Saffir-Simpson scale in the NOAA database that have come within 50 miles of Australia. None of these hit mainland Australia at Category 5 strength, but Cyclone Monica hit Australia’s Marchinbar Island, located off the north coast of the mainland, on April 23, 2006, as a Cat 5 with 180 mph winds.
A Cyclone stranded in the vast desert Outback. #Zelia pic.twitter.com/KOpPAxPuF8
— Backpirch Weather (@BackpirchCrew) February 14, 2025
An average tropical cyclone season so far for Australia
Zelia is the fifth named storm in the Australian region for the 2024/2025 hurricane season, which is close to average. Zelia is Australia’s first landfalling storm of the season, which is on the late side for a first landfall. According to Colorado State University’s real-time tropical cyclone activity page, the Southern Hemisphere as a whole is having a near-average to above-average tropical cyclone season, depending on which metric is used. So far in 2024/2025, there have been 16 named storms, seven hurricanes, six major hurricanes, and an accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, index of 141. The 1991-2020 averages are 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, four major hurricanes, and an ACE index of 105.
Record-warm ocean temperatures helped Zelia intensify
Zelia rapidly intensified on its approach to the coast of Australia, peaking as a Cat 4 with 150 mph (241 km/h) winds, but then stalled out. This allowed it to upwell cooler waters that weakened the storm to 130 mph (209 km/h) winds before landfall. Along the portion of Zelia’s track where rapid intensification occurred, record-warm ocean temperatures were present: about 31 degrees Celsius (88°F), which is 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (1.8-3.6°F) above average. This unusual warmth was made about 10 times likely by human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index: Ocean (Ocean CSI). This extra heat made it more likely for Zelia to rapidly intensify. The Climate Shift Index was explained in detail in a 2024 paper published in the journal Environmental Research, “Attributing daily ocean temperatures to anthropogenic climate change.”
Tropical cyclone numbers have decreased near Australia in recent decades
Although the strongest tropical cyclones have been getting stronger globally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has decreased in recent decades in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in the waters surrounding Australia. According to a 2022 study by Hiroyuki Murakami (Fig. 2), this can be attributed to an increase in dry, sinking air over the Southern Hemisphere caused by large-scale atmospheric circulation changes triggered by a decrease in aerosol particles from more stringent air pollution regulations enacted by the U.S. and Europe.
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