Haha nice work, Josh! I headbanged a little. Good luck on your chases this year. May they be as successful as 2017, though hopefully less witnessing to devestation of densely populated areas. Edit: *2017
Marcus is traversing cooler waters and weakening as expected. Without respite, however, another cyclone is intensifying rapidly out of the Torres Strait and moving into the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Cyclone Nora already has a clearing eye surrounded by -80°C tops and is on the way to becoming severe. The system is moving through an increasingly favorable environment for significant intensification and could interact with land as an intense cyclone. A more unfavorable environment late on the forecast period and slow movement may allow weakening prior to landfall of the cyclone's core. But that same slow movement may exacerbate flooding.
Severe Cyclone Marcus is a Category 5 on the Australian scale. It would probably be a Cat 5 on the US and Japan scales at some point as well. The cyclone looks to have completed an ERC and the eye that was partially covered in cloud debris appears to be clearing again. Dvorak is closing on AdjT#7 and 135 kts. The CDO is symmetrical with a thick ring of -80°C tops and MW representive of an intense eyewall.
Here's the current Aus Met advisory:
Good morning. I suspect we're in for a long evening and night. Good luck to everyone as far as hail or wind damage. And don't forget to unplug your sensitive electronics and hardware if you're going to be away from your home this afternoon-evening. Sometimes surge & ups fail and warranties can't replace everything.
Cyclone Marcus has been quite nuisance for Darwin and Kimberley in N. Australia the past few days. The core will be pulling away from the coast on Monday and will put on quite a show this week in the SE Indian Ocean. Forecast reasoning and modeling suggests a rapidly intensifying and prolonged cyclone event and Marcus may reach Category 5. Fortunately it will be doing so a good distance away from land.
**Warning: Loud volume with explicit language** I saw this video on another site that mentioned near Etowah. Save your ears and adjust volume down prior to viewing.
SPC is definitely leaving the door open for a possible upgrade as well: "Given the potential for significant severe storms, a categorical upgrade is possible in later outlooks once predictability increases and the centroid of severe coverage is better established."
The Lawrenceburg footage is very intense. Perhaps the most violent tornado ever recorded in Tennessee on video. Though the 20 mile path traversed sparsely populated communities, still quite miraculous that it resulted in no deaths.
Day of the EF-4 Henryville, Ind. tornado:
..and that same day near Chattanooga, an EF-3 hit Ooltewah and Cleveland, Tenn., and also this EF-2 in Etowah: