Tropical Cyclone Penny has crossed the Queensland coast as a category 1 system, bringing damaging winds and waves along with torrential rain.

TC Penny passed overhead the town of Weipa in Far North Queensland on Tuesday around 4:19pm, recording a central pressure of 991hPa. Winds also rapidly swung from a northwesterly to a southerly direction.

Maximum winds gusts of 91km/h at Thursday Island in the Torres Strait with Weipa recording a 76km/h gust. These wind gusts occured with strong squally showers.

The maximum wave heights towered in at a mammoth 9.0m, or the height of a three-storey building, at Albatross Bay near Weipa. Elsewhere, experienced unusually high tide.

Rainfall showed a different pattern, where the heaviest rain was about 50-100km away from the centre of the storm. Telegraph Crossing in the middle of the Peninsula recorded 144mm in the gauge in the 24 hours up to 9am on Wednesday. Many nearby recorded totals of 100-140mm. This is on top of the 300-500mm recorded during the month of December.

Tropical Cyclone Penny was downgraded to a tropical low but has since redeveloped into a Category 1 cyclone. Over the next few days, Penny will keep out in the Coral Sea. However, it is expected to swing back towards the coast around weekend, possibly bringing more severe weather to QLD’s East Coast.