This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Batchelor to New South Wales,

to my good friend and colleague Jeremy Zackis reporting on Australia's weather, its climate.

This time of year, it's late summer for Australia, late winter for us here in the North Temperate Zone.

Jeremy is observing weather that's not alien to what we receive in late summer.

The hurricanes come up out of the Caribbean or off the Atlantic.

However, Jeremy, a very good day to you.

You call it a cyclone.

I'm going to guess with wind speeds recorded up to 200

kilometers per hour. That's what we would call a category 5 hurricane. Is that something that's

regular that you see even repeats itself or is that unusual? Good evening to you.

Giday, John. That is something we do see from time to

time, but we don't see it that regularly anymore. In fact, this new cyclone has come off the

Pilbara region, so this is on the northwestern part of Australia, so the top left of the map here,

is actually unusually strong. So as he said there, it's really the equivalent to a Category

five hurricane and is churning away there just off the coast of Western Australia and starting

to slowly dissipate as it comes onshore, but still has a lot of energy behind it. And this is probably

on the upper end of my cyclones because most of the cyclones that hit Australia tend to be around

about three quarters the strength

of this one. So Zelia is really a very, very strong cyclone. And at the moment, what we believe

is happening is that with the El Ninya, the Indian Ocean dipole, and the oceans effectively

being warmer than they normally would be at this time of year, combining that with all the

cooler air in the upper

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