Updated: 9am Thursday 17th
A new Tropical Cyclone has been named, "Errol" taking flight off the northwest coast on Wednesday.
This is late in the season for a cyclone, which runs from November to April, but not unheard of - we had a cyclone in May three years ago.
This is our eleventh so far this season, which makes it our busiest cyclone season in six years.
Errol is currently well off the coast and no part of Australia is in danger on Thursday - but Errol is a beast, currently a Severe Tropical Cyclone with category 4 status (on the scale of 1 to 5), and Errol is starting to take a path that has it heading directly towards the coast.
Australia's northwest coast is a part of the world that is very used to cyclones, and the good news for Errol is that he is likely to weaken considerably before making landfall.
Errol nears the coast on Saturday, likely to only be a category one by that stage, and may reduce completely back into a Tropical Low before landfall early on Saturday.
Our late season cyclone brings a burst of rain the northwest, that may spread over other parts of Australia.
The last one trekked across the north and was the precursor for the big flooding in Queensland. That rain has lasted so long that there are still six warnings for Major Flooding, and many for Moderate and Minor Flooding. This water will take a long time to flow through the inland river systems.
The next burst of rain isn't likely to head to Queensland. Much of those flooded areas look quite dry over the next week.
Instead the rain is likely to meet up with weather systems further south, spreading rain across the southwest. Some of that may move into southeastern Australia, with a cold change set to arrive during the Easter break.
