In an emergency call Triple Zero (000)This page explains the official cyclone advice in plain English. It is not a live warning service and we are not an emergency service. For current warnings go to the Bureau of Meteorology. For local conditions, road closures, evacuation centres, sandbags and storm tide zones, go to your council’s disaster dashboard: Cairns Regional Council or Douglas Shire. For flood and storm emergency assistance, ring the SES on 132 500.
Cairns sits in the cyclone belt. That is simply where it is, and pretending otherwise would not help anybody. Most visits during the season pass without a single anxious moment, and most summers here are just hot, green and spectacular. But a cyclone is the one thing that can genuinely reshape a trip or a week of your life, and the difference between a frightening inconvenience and a dangerous situation is almost always whether people knew what to do beforehand.
So this page does one job. It gathers what the Bureau of Meteorology, Get Ready Queensland and the two local councils actually say, quotes them directly, and tells you where to go for live information. We have not written our own safety advice and we never will. Everything below is sourced, and the sources are listed at the bottom with the date we checked them.
The season, in the Bureau’s own words
The Bureau of Meteorology states plainly: “Australia’s tropical cyclone season runs from 1 November to 30 April. They can happen at other times in our region but this is rare.”
On frequency, the Bureau says: “On average, there are 10 tropical cyclones in the Australian region each season with” 3 to 4 “making landfall”, based on all seasons since the 1980 to 1981 season. Since 2000 that average has been, in the Bureau’s words, “closer to” 8 to 9 a season. The Australian region is enormous, so a cyclone in the season is not the same as a cyclone near Cairns.
Two lines from the Bureau are worth carrying with you. “Tropical cyclone formation is rarely evenly spread throughout the season; quiet periods are often followed by bursts of activity.” And, importantly for anyone on this coast: “Coastal impacts can still occur from tropical cyclones that don’t make landfall.”
What the categories actually mean
The category number is the single most misunderstood thing about cyclones. It is a wind measure and nothing else. The Bureau is explicit that the category “is based on its maximum mean wind speed” and “doesn’t indicate the severity of other hazards the cyclone may bring. For example, a Category 1 cyclone can have significant impact through heavy rain and flooding.”
The Bureau of Meteorology’s tropical cyclone categories, quoted in full
| Category | Maximum mean wind | Typical strongest gust | What the Bureau says to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 63 to 88 km/h | Up to 125 km/h | Damaging winds. Negligible house damage. Damage to some crops, trees and caravans. Craft may drag moorings. |
| 2 | 89 to 117 km/h | 125 to 164 km/h | Destructive winds. Minor house damage. Significant damage to signs, trees and caravans. Heavy damage to some crops. Risk of power failure. Small craft may break moorings. |
| 3 | 118 to 159 km/h | 165 to 224 km/h | Very destructive winds. Some roof and structural damage. Some caravans destroyed. Significant damage to crops and trees. Power failures likely. |
| 4 | 160 to 199 km/h | 225 to 279 km/h | Significant roofing loss and structural damage. Many caravans destroyed and blown away. Extensive damage to vegetation. Dangerous airborne debris. Widespread power failures. |
| 5 | More than 200 km/h | More than 279 km/h | Extremely dangerous with widespread destruction of buildings and vegetation. |
Quoted, not summarisedThe wording in the right-hand column is the Bureau of Meteorology’s own, reproduced exactly, and checked against bom.gov.au on 11 September 2026. We have not paraphrased it and you should not either. If a cyclone is approaching, read the Bureau’s current advice rather than this table, because the advice for your specific location is what matters.
Watch or warning, and why the difference matters
These two words are not interchangeable and the gap between them is your preparation time.
The Bureau issues a Tropical Cyclone Advice “when a tropical cyclone is likely to cause winds at 63 km/h or greater (gale force) over Australian communities within the next 48 hours”. Within that advice, for each coastal community in the forecast path, you get either a Tropical Cyclone Watch, “updated every 6 hours when gales are expected to start within” 24 to 48 hours, or a Tropical Cyclone Warning, issued “every 3 hours when gales are expected within 24 hours or already happening”.
On the forecast track map, the Bureau says a warning area is shown dark orange and means “gale-force or stronger winds are expected in the next 24 hours”, while a watch area is light orange and means those winds “might happen in the next” 24 to 48 hours. And the line everybody skips, which the Bureau prints in bold effect: “You can still be at risk if you are outside the range of possible tracks (grey cone).” The cone is where the centre might go, not the edge of the danger.
The lull is not the end
If you read one paragraph on this page, read this one. The Bureau: “When the eye of a cyclone passes over a location, there will be a temporary lull in the wind. This is soon replaced by destructive winds from another direction.”
People go outside during the lull. It can last a while, the sky can clear, and it feels finished. It is not finished, and the wind comes back from the opposite side, into structures and trees that have already been loaded from the other direction. Stay where you are until the authorities say the event is over, not until it feels over.
The other hazard that gets underestimated is water rather than wind. The Bureau: “Potentially, the storm surge is the most dangerous hazard associated with a tropical cyclone. It is not the same as a tsunami.” Both council dashboards publish storm tide and storm surge zone maps, and if you are staying anywhere low and near the water, that map is the thing to look at before the season, not during it.
What to have ready
Get Ready Queensland, the state government’s preparedness programme, publishes the official emergency kit list. Their framing is to pack for everyone in your household to stay at home for three days, and they note that if you are somewhere rural or at risk of being cut off, you should pack for longer, because “being isolated may include situations where your whole community is isolated, which will affect supplies being available in stores”.
The core of their list: water for three days, and they are specific, “Pack 10 litres of drinking water per person at a minimum”. Non-perishable food for three days. A first aid kit, because “a properly equipped first aid kit can save lives. Make sure you include a first aid manual”. A torch and spare batteries. A phone and portable charger. A can opener. Important documents, with copies scanned to a USB. Essential toiletries, tissues, wipes, hand sanitiser and face masks for each person. Sturdy work gloves.
And the item people forget: a battery operated radio. Get Ready Queensland calls it “one of the most reliable items in a disaster especially during power and internet loss”. When the power goes and the mobile network is congested or down, a radio is how you find out what is happening.
Their larger kit adds important medications, spare clothes, pet supplies, baby supplies, rubbish bags, safety glasses or sunglasses, thick gloves, a whistle so you can signal for help, a wrench or pliers to turn off power, water and gas, a tarpaulin and ropes, and a safety knife. They also publish a separate grab-and-go evacuation bag list for leaving in a hurry. The full checklist is a printable PDF on the Get Ready Queensland emergency kit page, and it is genuinely better printed and taken to the shops than read on a screen.
If you are visiting rather than living here
Your accommodation is your first call, not your last. Every hotel, resort, park and hostel in this region has a cyclone plan, staff who have been through it, and a role in the local disaster arrangements. They will tell you what the building is rated for, whether you are in a storm tide zone, and what they want you to do. Ask early rather than at the point everyone is asking at once.
On flights, the airlines make the call and they generally make it early, grounding aircraft and clearing the airport well ahead of the weather. Watch your airline’s own alerts and the Cairns Airport site rather than assuming a scheduled flight will operate.
On insurance, we are not insurers and will not pretend to be. Read your policy’s natural disaster wording before you travel and ask your insurer directly how they treat a cyclone that has already been named. Do not take a stranger’s word for it, including ours.
And the one that catches visitors more than anything else in the Far North, because the rain outlasts the wind by days: do not drive through floodwater. Get Ready Queensland’s campaign line is four words long for a reason. If it’s flooded, forget it.
The numbers worth saving
These are the official Queensland emergency contacts, as published by Get Ready Queensland.
- Police, Fire and Ambulance: Triple Zero (000)
- State Emergency Service, for flood and storm emergency assistance: 132 500
- Policelink, general enquiries: 13 14 44
- 13HEALTH: 13 43 25 84
- Ergon Energy, for power in the Far North: 13 16 70
- Road traffic and travel information: 13 19 40
- Community Recovery Hotline: 1800 173 349
- Lifeline: 13 11 14
- Translating and Interpreting Service, 24/7: 13 14 50
- National Relay Service: 1800 555 677
- RSPCA Queensland, 24/7 animal emergencies: 1300 264 625
Marine Rescue Queensland is 000 on land, or radio VHF 16 on the water.
Where the live information actually is
Bookmark these before the season rather than hunting for them during it.
The Bureau of Meteorology warnings page is the source for watches, warnings and forecast track maps. Everything else, including us, is downstream of it.
The Cairns Regional Council Disaster Dashboard carries emergency news, current Bureau warnings, power outages, road conditions and status, flood cameras, flood maps, the storm surge zone, river heights, sandbag locations and dam emergency action plans, all on one screen. It is the single most useful local page in an event.
The Douglas Shire Dashboard does the same job for Port Douglas, Mossman and the Daintree, and adds places of refuge, cyclone shelter information, storm tide, Port Douglas wind speed data and opt-in notifications you can subscribe to.
Get Ready Queensland also lists ABC Radio among its information sources, which is worth knowing if you have a battery radio and no power.
What this page is not
It is not live. We check it against the official sources and update it, but in a fast-moving event the Bureau and the councils will always be ahead of us, and you should go to them rather than to a travel website. We are not a disaster service and we do not want anyone treating us as one.
What we will do is put a notice on the relevant pages across this site when an event is occurring, telling you to confirm directly with the venue, the attraction or the authority. That is the useful thing a site like ours can do. The rest belongs to the people whose job it is.
Sources
Bureau of Meteorology: tropical cyclone categories, tropical cyclone warning services and Australian tropical cyclone season monitoring. Get Ready Queensland: emergency kit and Queensland emergency contact numbers. Cairns Regional Council Disaster Dashboard and Douglas Shire Dashboard. Every quotation on this page was read directly from the source listed and checked on 11 September 2026.
