# Gold Coast residents told to ‘take shelter now’ as NSW authorities search for man missing in Cyclone Alfred flood waters

Millions of people are sheltering from  as it crashes into the coast of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, bringing destructive winds and heavy rain.

The slow-moving weather system was finally expected to make landfall after speeding up overnight on Friday and into Saturday morning as it moved towards Brisbane.

The storm was downgraded to a category one as it crossed North Stradbroke Island late on Friday night and headed into Moreton Bay.

The latest update from the Bureau of Meteorology was that it would make landfall around Bribie Island north of Brisbane on Saturday morning and drop to a tropical low system before heading inland.

Destructive wind gusts of up to 150km/h are possible around the exposed island coasts and coastal locations.

At 3am AEST Alfred was 50km north-north-east of Brisbane and 100km north of Gold Coast, according to the bureau.

Residents in Brisbane were advised by the city council to take shelter, while people in parts of the Northern Rivers of NSW were told to seek higher ground because of the risk from flooding.

Gold Coast residents have been urged to stay home and “take shelter”, potentially for days, in a string of alerts from Broadbeach to Jacob Well and South Stradbroke Island.

As a search continued for a man washed into flood waters in northern , more than 200,000 homes in Queensland and NSW were without power on Friday evening as Tropical Cyclone Alfred crawled towards the coast. Telecommunications were also knocked out for many.

Energex, south-east Queensland’s electricity distribution network provider, said there were 227,000 customers affected by outages in the region.

“The slow-moving system is actually worse for our city,” the Gold Coast acting mayor, Donna Gates, said.

“Destructive wind gusts up to 150km/h are possible about the exposed island coasts and coastal locations near and to the south of the system,” he said.

“As the cyclone moves across Moreton Bay islands, it is expected to weaken from a category 2 to a category 1 system. That will mean that destructive winds are unlikely for Brisbane itself, but damaging wind gusts to 120km/h are expected and they will develop quickly as the system approaches.”

Flood watches remain in place from the Mary River through  creeks and rivers, the Pine and Caboolture rivers, Gold Coast creeks and rivers, as well as the upper and lower Brisbane and the Condamine, McIntyre and Weir rivers. A major flood warning is current for the Logan rivers.

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