The city of Darwin, Australia will be spared the worst of Cyclone Monica — until recently, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded on planet Earth — thanks to an unexpected left-hand turn and early landfall. Monica, which had been expected to track briefly over the Cobourg Peninsula and then re-emerge over water en route to the city of 100,000, instead came ashore well east of the peninsula, slamming into a sparsely populated area west of Maningrida, and is now proceeding over land, weakening as she goes. The Storm Track has more, including a satellite image of the monster storm at landfall:

As you can see, she looks considerably weaker now:

It now seems almost certain that Monica will not re-emerge over water until she is well past Darwin, meaning her closest approach to the city will be as a shadow of her former self. The current forecast calls for a “Category 2″ Monica at closest approach to Darwin, which actually means a strong tropical storm — not even a hurricane — on the American scale. (See explanation here.) The latest forecast track is below:

If you compare that to last night’s forecast, you can see what a drastic change this is.

Monica’s left-hand turn, sparing Darwin the worst, is somewhat reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina’s right-hand turn, which spared New Orleans the worst (preventing a much higher death toll and more severe and rapid flooding). Of course, Katrina’s turn was much more last-minute, and thus New Orleans still got hit quite hard. In this case, if the current forecast holds, Monica won’t be much of a problem at all for Darwin.

Phew.

P.S. Dr. Jeff Masters has more, including an awesome image of Monica at its peak intensity — 879 mb of pressure, making her the most intense cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. She weakened a bit before landfall, though, and probably came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale (still a Category 5 on the Australian scale).

P.P.S. After the jump, an animated GIF microwave image of Monica making landfall. She appears to have been weakening significantly even as she was moving ashore. (It’s a 6.4 MB image, so be patient; it’ll take a while to load. You can download it by right-clicking here.