A false-colour temperature satellite view of Cyclone Kirrily on Wednesday afternoon.(Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)
Cyclone Kirrily has been declared and is expected to be felt on Queensland's coast and islands into Thursday morning.
The cyclone is currently a category one but is expected to cross the coast as a category two system on Thursday night, according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).
It's expected to make landfall between Cardwell and Bowen.
The current warning zone stretches from Lucinda to Sarina, and the watch zone from Innisfail to Lucinda.
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The cyclone is expected to still develop into a category two system but is not as strong as originally forecast, BOM forecaster Patch Clapp said.
"It's expected to be on the lower end of a category two, it's not looking likely to move to the higher end of the category or even make a last minute push to a category three," he said.
"But despite this, we can sometimes still see the heaviest rainfalls from these types of systems on the lower end."
The winds have started up in Bowen, which is in the cyclone warning zone. (ABC News: Victoria Pengilley)
Gale strength winds are still forecast for Whitsundays overnight, with potential destructive wind gusts of up to 140km/hr expected to develop on Thursday from Cardwell to Proserpine.
"Along the coast it's a degree of calm before the storm, around Townsville and further north it's not quite blowing yet," said Mr Clapp.
"It has been a really challenging environment for this system, now we can really see those gale strength winds wrapping around the system."
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Although coastal crossings in short succession are not unheard of, they are rare, Mr Clapp said.
"We did go back to 2015, we saw Marsha and Nathan about a month apart, and back in 2011 we had Anthony and severe tropical Cyclone Yasi."
After crossing the coast it's likely to track further inland as a tropical low bringing heavy to intense rain to parts of central and western Queensland, and is no longer expected to head south.
People in Townsville have been sandbagging ahead of the cyclone crossing. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)
Education Minister Di Farmer said that number could grow as the system approached.
"The Queensland Education Department continues to follow the advice of the Queensland Disaster Management Committee and local emergency services regarding the potential impacts of severe weather events on our communities," she said.
"We all know that major flood events — whether riverine or flash flooding — in particular can impact on local school communities very quickly and without warning in some cases."
Surfers headed to the beach at Mackay on Wednesday. Winds aren't expected to impact coastal communities until tonight.(ABC News: Victoria Pengilley)
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Two evacuation centres are now open in Townsville, at Heatley Secondary College and Wills Street.
"If your home is not a safe place or you will be at risk of isolation and have no other accommodation options (family, friends, hotel) consider one of our evacuation centres," Townsville's local disaster management group said.
Whitsundays, Townsville, Bowen and Abbott Point ports have been closed. Vessels in those ports cannot leave their cyclone moorings until further notice.
Townsville Airport will be closed from noon on Thursday, and the airport said airlines would be "cancelling and rescheduling as necessary".
On Wednesday, 31 staff on the QFES disaster response team arrived ahead of Kirrily making landfall.
Earlier, Townsville mayor Jenny Hill said up to 12,000 homes in Townsville could be damaged in the cyclone.
"We suspect up to 620 homes in an event like this may not be habitable … based around the age of the properties," she said.
Police were doorknocking in the Townsville suburbs of Cungulla, Saunders Beach and Gumlow, which Ms Hill said were at risk of being cut off in heavy rain.
Tonsville Mayor Jenny Hill says if people choose to shelter in place, they need to have supplies ready.(ABC News: Lily Nothling)
"If they choose to shelter in place, they may be isolated for a prolonged period of time," Ms Hill said.
"Think about maybe moving in with some mates here in the city. If you are going to stay and shelter in place, please ensure you've got everything — food, fuel, water, any medical prescriptions you might need."
The city's Australia Day celebrations have been cancelled.
Extra emergency crews
QFES Acting Commissioner Steve Smith said it was a "complex" system.
"We implore people to make sure they stay informed and are aware of what's occurring in their environment and they're proactively doing that, they're not waiting for us to knock on the door," he said.
Residents in Bowen are stocking up on essentials with local stores running low on bottled water and toilet paper.(ABC News: Dean Caton)
He said about 60 additional personnel have moved into Townsville on Wednesday, and over the next couple of days another 100 people will move in, with a further 60 on Friday and 60 on Monday.
"We've got our own personnel from across various parts of the state moving into those areas and we've got assistance coming from New South Wales and Victoria," he said.
"They'll maintain a high degree of mobility in order to move them around and have them in the right locations as this system evolves."
Kris Maguire from QFES said about 10 swift water rescue boats, along with more inflatable rafts, had been driven to Townsville from the state's south.
"We're pre-deploying these resources down the coast to the central region, which at this point in time, we think is going to be the highest threat," he said.
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Tom Saunders says there's been a lot of discussion about extreme weather lately.
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Tom: The record flooding in northern Queensland from Jasper, widespread major flooding in Victoria, some of that also from record rainfall, plus the heatwaves.
But you have to remember, that's just weather at this time of year in Australia. In the northern parts, it's the monsoon season, along the monsoon trough you get tropical lows, you get tropical cyclones, you get flooding, and in the height of summer you often get heatwaves through central and southern parts of the country.
One interesting feature, there's a connection between the active monsoon right now and the heatwave. The monsoon lows over the north, or the tropical lows, carry warm humid air from the surface up to the top of the troposphere, about 10 to 15 kilometres up.
It then moves poleward laterally where it sinks. Now, as it's sinking, because it's now very dry air, it warms up rapidly and you end up with heat domes, so domes of very hot air pushing to the surface.
And that's why we're currently seeing maximum temps even up into the high 40s.
That's where we'll leave today's live coverage — and a big thanks to ABC meteorologist Tom Saunders for joining us.
Tom Saunders says it comes down to strength.
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Tom: The difference between a tropical low and a tropical cyclone is just the strength of the systems. So we're talking about a tropical area of low pressure — that means winds blowing clockwise around the centre in the southern hemisphere, so around Australia.
And once you have a tropical low, if the wind speed surrounding more than half of the centre exceeds gale force, so at 63 kilometers per hour, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology would then classify the system as a category one tropical cyclone.
Then the stronger the winds become, the higher the category becomes of the tropical cyclone.
Tom Saunders says one of the benefits of the cyclone taking so long to form is that once it does develop, it's probably only going to have around 24 hours before making landfall.
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Tom: And that's not going to be enough time, more than likely, for it develop into a category three tropical cyclone or above.
Once you start to get to category three, that's when you see significant wind damage and also a major storm surge.
Category one or two you can still see damaging to destructive winds. However, the main threat then becomes the heavy rain and flooding as we saw with Cyclone Jasper back in December.
A relatively weak tropical cyclone can still bring hundreds of millimetres of rain and even record flooding.
Wondering what this is? Join us next time we're live and be part of the discussion.
The rainfall totals for the southern part of the state were also expected to be reduced but a risk of localised flooding was still possible.
Frustrating recovery
Premier Steven Miles, speaking from Cairns, said the recovery from Cyclone Jasper was "frustratingly slow".
"Work continues to get the core infrastructure up and running in Wujal Wujal," he said.
"The pump [at the wastewater treatment plant], although it is running at the moment, it was inundated in the flood and there's an expectation that it will fail."
He said they were searching for parts to repair or replace the pump as soon as possible.
"The timelines keep shifting from two, four, six, eight back to two to four weeks."
Meanwhile, north Queensland is reporting millions of lost tourism dollars.
