Cyclones Hayley and Jenna batter remote Australia in unusually intense season start

The wind began to howl on the northern Dampier Peninsula just before dusk.

By 5 p.m. on Dec. 30, the eye of Severe Tropical Cyclone Hayley was crossing the coast near Djarindjin and Lombadina, at the tip of Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula, with enough force to snap power poles and peel back sheets of roofing iron. At Lombadina airstrip, instruments later clocked a wind gust of 158 kph.

“It was a pretty wild ride,” Nathan McIvor, chief executive of the Djarindjin Aboriginal Corporation, said after the storm. “We’ve got trees down, we’ve got powerlines down, we’ve got water coming through walls and roofing iron lifting.”

Six days later and more than 2,000 kilometers to the northwest, residents of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands watched palms bend and banana trees topple as another system, Tropical Cyclone Jenna, intensified faster than forecast while brushing past the low-lying Indian Ocean territory.

Together, the two storms—bracketed by an earlier Christmas cyclone at Cocos and an unusually high tally of intense systems—are defining one of the most active starts to an Australian cyclone season in decades, and testing the resilience of some of the country’s most remote communities.

A season that will not pause

The 2025–26 Australian cyclone season was already running hot before Hayley and Jenna formed.

By early January, the Bureau of Meteorology had tracked multiple named systems across the region, including Cyclone Grant near Cocos around Christmas and a short-lived Cyclone Iggy near Christmas Island. Hayley became the third storm of the season to reach Category 4 strength in the Australian region—a record number that early in the season since reliable satellite-era records began in 1980–81—the bureau said in an early January tropical climate update.

While numbers can fluctuate from year to year, climate scientists and the bureau have warned for several seasons that a warming ocean is likely to mean fewer tropical cyclones overall but a higher proportion of the most intense Category 4 and 5 systems, along with heavier rainfall in those storms.

Hayley’s rapid intensification offshore and Jenna’s faster-than-expected strengthening near Cocos offered fresh examples of that pattern—and highlighted the challenge for communities where evacuation options are limited and infrastructure is aging.

Hayley hits the Kimberley

Hayley developed from a tropical low in late December over very warm waters north of the Kimberley coast. It was named as a tropical cyclone around Dec. 28–29 and strengthened quickly over the ocean.

By the morning of Dec. 30, Hayley had reached severe Category 4 intensity over water, with estimated 10-minute sustained winds of about 165 kph and gusts near 230 kph. As it curved toward the coast, the system weakened slightly but remained a severe Category 3 cyclone when it made landfall near Cape Leveque around 5 p.m. local time.

The northern Dampier Peninsula is sparsely populated but home to several remote Aboriginal communities, including Djarindjin, Lombadina, Ardyaloon (One Arm Point) and Beagle Bay. Many houses are older and not built to the latest cyclone standards, and the communities rely on a single sealed route, the Broome–Cape Leveque Road, for access to medical care, food and fuel in Broome.

Ahead of landfall, the Bureau of Meteorology and Western Australia’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services escalated warnings from a cyclone watch to an emergency alert for areas north of Broome to Cape Leveque. By midday on Dec. 30, authorities were urging residents still on the peninsula to shelter in place.

“For those people that are still in that warning area north of Broome, it is now too late to leave,” DFES acting Kimberley Superintendent Todd Pender said.

He warned that as winds intensified, loose material had “the propensity to pick up and fly around the community.”

An evacuation center opened at Broome’s recreation and aquatic center for those who had managed to leave earlier, including residents from caravans and older houses deemed most at risk.

On the peninsula, the worst of the weather was short but severe. In addition to the 158 kph gust recorded at Lombadina airstrip, Yampi Sound further west registered gusts above 130 kph. Rain gauges near the landfall zone measured more than 130 millimeters in 24 hours, while Broome saw less than a third of that.

Residents reported roof sheets lifting, water entering homes through ceilings and walls, and debris strewn across roads. Trees and power lines came down. The Broome–Cape Leveque Road was partially closed, cutting off easy access to the tip of the peninsula during and immediately after the storm.

Despite the violent conditions, there were no reports of deaths or widespread structural failure. The relative lack of large towns in the landfall area meant damage was significant but localized.

“These systems always have the potential to cause some damage to the environment and also to communities,” Pender said. “Once the system passes through, it’s too late to be asking for assistance.”

For local industries, the near miss still carried costs. The Dampier Peninsula hosts pearling and tourism enterprises, including Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, whose third-generation owner, James Brown, said before landfall he was “feeling pretty anxious” with extensive on-water infrastructure in Hayley’s projected path.

Two cyclones in two weeks at Cocos

While the Kimberley cleaned up, attention shifted to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian external territory of about 600 people located more than 1,000 kilometers southwest of Java and some 2,000 kilometers from the WA mainland.

Only two of the archipelago’s 27 coral islands—West Island and Home Island—are inhabited. They sit just a few meters above sea level, with a central lagoon and fringing reef that offer some protection from waves but leave the communities vulnerable to storm surge and flooding.

On Christmas Day, Tropical Cyclone Grant had already passed just to the north of Cocos as a Category 1 to 2 system. Residents reported strong winds, uprooted trees and localized flooding at the height of the tourist season.

Normally, long-time residents say, the islands can expect several weeks of calmer weather after a cyclone. This time, they had less than a fortnight.

Jenna formed from a tropical low in the eastern Indian Ocean and was named as a cyclone on Jan. 5 just east of Cocos. Forecasts initially suggested it might remain a tropical low as it passed by. Instead, the system intensified to Category 1 as it moved near the islands, then strengthened further to Category 2 later that evening as it tracked to the southwest.

At Cocos, instruments recorded gale-force winds with gusts up to 91 kph. Rainfall totals directly from Jenna were modest—about 7 millimeters in 24 hours to late morning on Jan. 6—but the storm added to already saturated ground. Residents described leaky roofs, minor flooding and fallen trees, including damage to banana crops on West Island.

Flights were canceled and the lagoon was closed during the worst of the weather, but by the following day the runway and lagoon had reopened and regular services resumed. There were no reports of serious injury or major structural damage.

Even so, the back-to-back systems unsettled locals.

“Usually after a tropical low or a cyclone, we’ve got a three-to-six-week period where the weather calms down,” said Dieter Gerhard, chair of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Tourism Association, who has lived on the islands for more than 30 years. “This year, Mother Nature has doubled it and given us a bonus one. Here’s hoping that’s not setting the trend for the season.”

Gerhard and other residents said the quick succession of storms highlighted drainage problems around some low-lying properties and reinforced calls for more detailed surveys and sandbagging plans in exposed areas.

Insurance and a shifting risk profile

Even when physical damage is modest, repeated cyclones can carry significant financial costs for small communities and for the wider insurance system.

On Jan. 6, the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation declared Tropical Cyclone Jenna a “Declared Cyclone Event” under the Terrorism and Cyclone Insurance Act 2003. Based on advice from the Bureau of Meteorology, the declaration set the start of the event at 4 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time on Jan. 5.

The designation triggers the federal government’s cyclone reinsurance pool, which provides government-backed reinsurance for residential, small business and strata property policies in cyclone-prone areas. The pool is intended to keep premiums affordable and ensure insurers continue to offer cover in high-risk regions.

As cyclone seasons become more active or intense, the pool’s role is likely to grow, raising questions in policy circles about how future disaster costs will be shared between taxpayers, private insurers and residents.

Remote front lines in a warming climate

For people on the Dampier Peninsula and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, the 2025–26 cyclone season so far has been less about statistics and more about practical realities: boarding up windows, checking on older neighbors, losing tourist bookings, waiting for roads or runways to reopen.

In the Kimberley, each “near-miss” severe cyclone still leaves a trail of maintenance work and gradual degradation in communities where housing and infrastructure have long lagged behind national standards. On Cocos, the experience of two cyclones in two weeks has sharpened concerns about how low-lying atolls will cope if stronger storms track closer in future decades.

Scientists caution that no single cyclone can be attributed solely to climate change. But the combination of an unusually high number of early-season Category 4 systems, rapid intensification episodes and back-to-back storms on Australia’s fringes is consistent with what models suggest a warmer ocean will bring.

As clear skies returned over both the Kimberley and Cocos, residents went back to repairing roofs, replanting gardens and watching the cyclone charts.

For now, the season still has months to run.