Hurricanes (typhoon) hitting Australia? is this common?

Last one was in February of 2015 by checking a couple of weather sites.

According to our friend fron down under, cyclones are quite common there. Don’t know about that magnitude.

Apparently. There’s a whole Wikipedia section devoted to the topic.

Australia and New Zealand and that Pacific Islands area are hit by cyclones (in the Southern Hemisphere they are called cyclones )regularly.

I sent this to our Queensland jelly, when she wakes up she may check in!

@Lightlyseared quoted a very good resource that quotes all the data. It will tell you how damaging and how often.

The northern parts of Australia (North Queensland, Northern Territory, Northern Western Australia) often get cyclones. And we call them cyclones not hurricanes or typhoons. This last one (Debbie) that hit over the last 24-hours was a huge, category 4 and has caused a lot of damage up North. She was over 100kms wide and the eye took about three hours to pass overhead.

People who live in the region are used to cyclones and know how to prepare, but we also get a lot of tourists in that part of the country. So they do cause challenges in ensuring people get out of the way of the cyclone and take shelter with family, friends or in official shelters outside of the cyclone’s path. We can get them as far down as Brisbane, and one danced up and down the coast a few years ago, but at the moment, it’s unusual for them to travel this far down the coast.

However, global warming is leading to temperature increases in the Pacific Ocean waters. This may lead to even more intense cyclones in the future. I’m not sure if the changing water temperature will lead to more cyclones, but the fact that the Irukandji jellyfish is now being found in waters much further south shows the oceans are warming. Since cyclones form over warm oceans when there is a low-pressure system, it seems quite likely we will experience more cyclones further down the coast in the future.

They are actually called Willy-Willies in Austrailia

No they aren’t @AmIMoreThanYouBargainedForYet. A willy-willy is a mini tornado or a dust devil. A cyclone is a huge, destructive weather system.

Edit. I should say I looked up the term and this source suggests someone somewhere might use that term for a cyclone, but I’ve never heard anyone use it for a cyclone.