THE tropical low that has been punishing the Top End recently with heavy rain and damaging wind gusts has developed into tropical cyclone Laurence, the first tropical cyclone of the season.
The 48 hours from 9am Friday to 9am Sunday has seen a whopping 294mm of rainfall over Darwin, well over the monthly average.
This represents the highest two-day total for Darwin in eleven years.
Strong winds and thunderstorms accompanied this extreme weather, leaving the city with widespread power outages and storm flooded roads.
With winds gusting up to 95 kilometres per hour, and intensifying, Laurence threatens all sea-craft and coastal communities in its path.
Situated about 150km southwest of Darwin, this category one system is expected to track westward over the next few days, escalating into a category two system late today (Monday).
Currently predictions are for Laurence to skim past the Kimberley coastline of Western Australia, bringing potentially destructive winds and very heavy rainfall.
There remains large uncertainty as to if, when and where Laurence will make landfall.
If Laurence takes a sudden southward turn, the sparsely populated northern Kimberley will bare the brunt of the force.
However, if it takes a sweeping southwesterly path the larger population centres about Broome are potentially threatened.
Click here for the latest forecasts, warnings and reports relating to TC-Laurence.
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