TIM

History

Tropical Cyclone Tim was a small, short-lived system that spent its entire life over the open waters of the eastern Indian Ocean between late March and early April 1994. It began as a tropical low within an active monsoon trough on 28 March, in the region south of Sumatra and to the south-southwest of Christmas Island. Drifting on a steady west to west-southwest heading over warm water, the low gradually became better organised and was named Tim by the Bureau of Meteorology's Perth warning centre on 30 March.

Steered generally westward by a subtropical ridge lying to its south, Tim passed about 100 km to the south of Christmas Island, where the only discernible effect was a shift in the wind. The system reached its strongest point over open ocean on 31 March, attaining Category 2 on the Australian scale with an estimated central pressure near 980 hPa, maximum sustained winds of roughly 100 km/h and gusts to about 140 km/h. It remained well offshore, more than 1,000 km from the Western Australian coast.

From 2 April increasing upper-level wind shear and progressively cooler sea surface temperatures stripped the deep convection away from the circulation centre, and Tim weakened rapidly to a tropical low before dissipating on 3 April in the vicinity of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

No coastal communities or island settlements were affected, and there were no casualties, injuries or reports of damage; the cyclone's only practical consequence was gale warnings issued for shipping in the eastern Indian Ocean.

Sources: Bureau of Meteorology report Wikipedia