SYDNEY, March 20 (Reuters) - A severe tropical cyclone neared Australia's northeast coast on Friday as residents braced for destructive winds, heavy rain, flash floods and power outages, while authorities urged them to take immediate shelter.
Cyclone Narelle, currently swirling about 30 km (19 miles) off the coast in the Coral Sea, is expected to make landfall on Friday morning as a category four storm, one rung below the strongest category five, Australia's weather bureau said.
The storm could unleash winds of up to 250 km per hour, strong enough to uproot trees and send debris airborne, Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Angus Hines told ABC News.
"Winds of that speed are pretty hard to imagine if you haven't experienced them before. They are just so, so strong," Hines told ABC News.
"Obviously that puts a lot of branches and debris into the air flying around that can become really dangerous."
The cyclone is expected to cross the coast before 9 a.m. (2200 GMT, Thursday) and weaken as it tracks westward across the Cape York Peninsula over the next 18 hours.
However, the warm waters in the Gulf of Carpentaria will help the storm to strengthen again into a severe tropical cyclone before impacting the Northern Territory on Saturday, Hines said.
Storm warnings extend across a 600-km stretch of Far North Queensland, a region home to roughly 300,000. Authorities also warned of intense rainfall affecting some tourist towns along the Great Barrier Reef.
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Stephen Coates)
