CRAIG

History

Tropical Cyclone Craig was a short-lived system that affected northern Australia in March 2003. It developed on 8 March from a tropical low lying close to the coast of the Northern Territory, in the waters off the Top End, and was named as it organised into a tropical cyclone. Systems in this part of the basin fell under the responsibility of the Bureau of Meteorology's tropical cyclone warning centres at Darwin and Brisbane, both of which tracked Craig through its life.

Shortly after forming, Craig moved against the Northern Territory, crossing the coast there before continuing on an easterly course. Rather than dissipating over land, the system survived to emerge over the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the warm, shallow waters of the gulf allowed it to persist as it traversed the enclosed sea. Craig then approached the western shores of Cape York Peninsula and made a second landfall, coming ashore in Queensland on 12 March. The cyclone weakened over land after this final coastal crossing, having existed for only a few days in total.

Craig remained a relatively weak tropical cyclone throughout its passage across northern Australia, and the effects it produced were generally minor. The sparsely populated coastlines of the Northern Territory and the western Cape York Peninsula, where the two landfalls occurred, limited the potential for significant damage, and no substantial losses or casualties were attributed to the system. In this respect Craig contrasted sharply with other cyclones of the same period, notably Beni, which brought damaging flooding to Queensland, and Inigo, which went on to become the most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Australian region.

Craig was one of several systems to occur during an otherwise quiet 2002–03 Australian region cyclone season, in which activity was suppressed across much of the basin and shifted eastwards into the South Pacific. Its double landfall — first in the Northern Territory, then in Queensland after a crossing of the Gulf of Carpentaria — remains the most distinctive feature of its track.

Sources: Bureau of Meteorology report Wikipedia