The 2019-2020 Australian cyclone season was a fairly below average cyclonic season in the waters between 90 ° and 160 ° east longitude that surround Australia . Although the season officially started on November 1, 2019 and ended on April 30, 2020, tropical cyclones can form in this area at any time, so this season includes all systems that develop between July 1, 2019 and June 30 2020 form. With the emergence of the first system on January 4th, this season is the one with the second start at the latest, its beginning of reliable observations after the 1986-87 season . With a total of seven cyclones, this cyclone season is the least active since 2016-17 . Three of these systems have intensified into severe tropical cyclones, and three cyclones have reached the mainland at least as cyclone strength. The total death toll from the effects of all storms is 28; it also takes into account indirect fatalities. Cyclone Damien was the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the Pilbara region in Western Australia since Cyclone Christine in late 2013 .
Source: BOM's Season Outlooks for Tropical Cyclones
Ahead of the official start of the cyclone season on November 1st, the BoM, Fiji Meteorological Service, New Zealand's MetService, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), as well as several other national weather services in the Pacific, worked together to achieve a joint effort during October 2019 To publish a forecast of the season for the islands in the South Pacific. This forecast predicted an almost average number of tropical cyclones for the 2019-20 cyclone season. Accordingly, nine to twelve tropical cyclones should develop between 135 ° east and 120 ° west longitude, compared to the average value just over 10. At least four of them were expected to intensify into a severe tropical cyclone, in one case up to category 5 of the Australian cyclone scale.
Season overview
The season got off to an unusually late start because the first system of the season, Cyclone Blake, didn't form until early January 2020. Blake eventually hit the mainland in northwest Australia and disintegrated shortly afterwards. At this point, Cyclone Claudia was forming elsewhere, which existed for two weeks and reached Category 3 on the Australian cyclone scale before disintegrating west of Australia. In the last ten days of January a tropical low occurred, which however dissolved after a week without having reached storm strength. At the end of the month and beginning of February, three more tropical lows emerged, one of which resolved with no development. A second moved in and out of the Australian region and was eventually classified as 06F by the Fiji Meteorological Service . The third low intensified into Cyclone Damien. At the end of February, two more tropical lows developed to the cyclones Esther and Ferdinand. Esther did not improve significantly, but Ferdinand achieved category 3 on the Australian scale, which is equivalent to category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology monitors all tropical cyclones in the region and names the systems that are formed outside of the areas of responsibility of the Jakarta and Port Moresby warning centers mentioned below. Before the season, the next eight names from the list of tropical cyclone names were as follows:
The Tropical Cyclone Warning Center in Jakarta monitors the formation of tropical cyclones between the equator and 11 ° south latitude between 90 ° and 145 ° east longitude. If a tropical cyclone had formed in this area, the name would have been removed from the following list; however, no cyclone formed in this area in the 2019-20 season.
Mangga (unused)
Seroja (unused)
Teratai (unused)
Anggrek (unused)
Bakung (unused)
Cempaka (unused)
Dahlia (unused)
Flamboyan (unused)
TCWC Port Moresby
Tropical cyclones, which form between the equator and 11 ° south latitude between 151 and 160 ° east longitude, get their name from the Tropical Cyclone Warning Center in Port Moresby , Papua New Guinea . The formation of named storms in this sea area is rare; no cyclone has formed here since 2007 . The order in which the names are assigned is probably not regulated. The list of names includes the following names:
Aluminum (unused)
Buri (unused)
Dodo (unused)
Emau (unused)
Fere (unused)
Hibu (unused)
Ila (unused)
Kama (unused)
Lobu (unused)
Maila (unused)
other names
When a named tropical cyclone reaches the Australian region of the South Pacific (east of 160 ° east longitude), it retains the name assigned to it by the Fiji Meteorological Service (FMS) or the New Zealand MetService . The same applies if a tropical cyclone moves across from the southwest Indian Ocean (west of 90 ° east longitude); it then keeps the name given to it by the weather services in Mauritius or Madagascar on behalf of Météo-France . In the 2019-20 cyclone season, this affected the following names:
