Two Major Storms - Cyclone Marcia & Cyclone Lam Hits Northeast Australia Friday Feb 20,2015

Two major storms have slammed into Australia, bringing winds that have knocked out power to homes and forced evacuations in coastal areas. 

Tropical Cyclone Marcia hit the Queensland coast between St Lawrence and Yeppoon.
Tens of thousands of Australians hunkered down on Friday Feb 20,2015 as a powerful cyclone crossed the northeast, damaging houses, bringing down trees, cutting power lines and causing flash flooding, while a second storm made landfall to the west.
The major storm caught Queensland state almost unawares after it intensified in just a few hours before slamming into the coast midmorning as a category 5 system - the highest rating.
Emergency services scrambled to evacuate thousands of homes in the direct path of Cyclone Marcia before pulling out and warning anyone who had not left to barricade themselves inside to avoid wind gusts peaking at 285 kph (177 mph).
Rail lines to coastal ports, an essential part of Queensland's A$280 billion ($218 billion) commodities export-driven economy, were brought to a standstill.
"Stay indoors, don't go outside," Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told a news conference as the storm passed over the coastal town of Yeppoon, home to 16,000 people about 550 km (340 miles) north of the state capital, Brisbane

More than 10% of Australia's sugar crop is at risk from Marcia, an industry body warned. The world's No. 3 exporter of raw sugar is set to produce 4.6 million tonnes of the commodity in 2015.

Arriving as a Category Five storm, it has now been downgraded to a Three but forecasters are warning of heavy rain and abnormally high tides

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said Marcia was expected to move south and gradually weaken

Separately, Tropical Cyclone Lam hit the Northern Territory.
Lam, which arrived as a Category Four, struck Elcho Island and is moving south-west. Local residents said roofs had been torn off from a number of houses and trees uprooted.
Cyclone Lam, a category 4 storm, made landfall in the early hours near the settlement of Ramingining, where residents were beginning to emerge to inspect the damage. Communications had been cut with tiny Elcho Island, which was believed to have experienced widespread damage, Northern Territory police said.
By midmorning Lam was downgraded to a category 2 storm but continued to dump heavy rain across Australia's north as it moved southwest.

Note
In 2013, powerful tropical cyclone Oswald hit Queensland, killing at least four people and flooding wide areas.