Cyclone Marcia left a trail of destruction as it crashed across Queensland’s central coast on Friday. Thankfully though, there has so far been no reported loss of life.
Marcia made landfall as a category 5 tropical storm – the most powerful kind, with winds approaching 300kph – at around 9:30am on Friday morning, between the towns of Shoalwater Bay and Yeppoon.
Yeppoon experienced some of the most serious damage, as Marcia’s eye traversed to its west .
#TCMarcia: A selection of the most dramatic images of the cyclone and the damage it has left rel=”nofollow” pic.twitter.com/hzvOrPHF96
— ABC News (@abcnews) February 20, 2015
Many houses were left without roofs with several suffering collapsed walls. Trees were upended and debris littered the town’s streets as gales blasted at over 140kph.
Cyclone Marcia lost some of its strength as it cut its way further south and inland, but still carved a path of carnage. Rockhampton experience the brunt of the cyclone. The storm crashed directly into the city at 2pm as a category 3 system, causing major damage to homes and businesses.
Phil Tout lost the roof off his home in #Rockhampton after #TCMarcia came through today. @abcnews pic.twitter.com/ntCfT82Lr1 — Allyson Horn (@allysonhorn) February 20, 2015
The Fitzroy River pounded through the streets, swollen by the storm’s rain surge. About 30,000 homes in the Rockhampton area were without power on Friday night.
WATCH: River rages through Rocky after Cyclone Marcia – video
Cyclone Marcia continued to weaken throughout the afternoon. By 8pm on Friday night it had been downgraded to a category 1 storm. I is expected to weaken still to a tropical depression as Marcia makes its way south overnight and in to Saturday.
Heavy rain and some flooding is still expected over large swathes of south east Queensland and northern New South Wales over the course of the weekend.
Although the worst appears to have passed, Queenslanders are being urged to remain alert. While reminding residents that the current emergency is not yet over, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk sought to reassure residents on Friday evening, emphasising that the situation was “not like the 2011 weather event”, referring to the historic floods deluge that consumed the state’s south east.
TOP IMAGE: Tropical Cyclone Marcia wreaked havoc on the Queensland town of Yeppoon on February 20, 2015. (By PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)