Cyclone Narelle live updates: Monster storm downgraded as WA locals emerge to assess damage

West Australia is set to face banana shortages following Narelle’s destruction at the Carnarvon Sweeter Banana plantation.

The business shared footage of the winds that tore through the banana plant on Friday, with the damage set to be extensive.

Sweeter Banana has suffered infrastructure damage, just six weeks after they were smashed by tropical cyclone Mitchell.

DFES has advised that it is safe to return with caution west of Onslow to Coral Bay.

The cyclone risk has passed, and it is now safe for the community to return to the area.

Tourist spot Bullara Station has shared footage revealing more stunning scenes of the calamity that cyclone Narelle has been.

Horses were submerged up to their necks while cars were lifted off the ground as the flooding continued at the cattle farm.

Mandurah residents were better off opting to boat instead of drive along their local streets thanks to heavy flooding.

Despite Narelle still working her way down WA’s coast and not looking close to the Peel town, Mandurah copped a heavy downpour of rain that left the town resembling Venice.

They had planned and trained to cycle all the way from Albany to Perth but wild weekend weather meant cyclists in this year’s Hawaiian Ride for Youth practically swum into Mandurah and then rode the bus to the finish line.

The conditions brought by cyclone Narelle worked against riders for much of the planned four-day, 700km journey and eventually forced them to cancel the last leg from Mandurah to Perth, but did not stop them raising more than $2.1 million for youth mental health charity Youth Focus.

Sophie Pugsley said the conditions were certainly testing.

“Bit of intense wind, bit of rain, we ended up swimming to Mandurah, which was quite interesting,” she said.

“But it was a lot of fun, everyone was so good and so resilient and they just pushed through the tough weather and it was great.”

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Requests for assistance from State Emergency Service crews has continued to climb throughout the day.

In the Pilbara, which faced the brunt of the category 4 system, there have been 96 requests for assistance - a majority of them in Exmouth.

The jobs were mainly for structure damage, flooding and downed trees.

There have been 54 requests for assistance in the Mid West-Gascoyne region.

The Perth metropolitan also had 124 callouts due to water ingress and flooding.

This was due to a deluge of rain, which mainly hit Mandurah with more than 100mm falling in the last 24 hours.

Perth motorists need to stay on high alert throughout the weekend, with torrential rain flooding main roads across the city.

Areas that have been affected include Great Eastern Highway Bypass and Abernethy Road, Hazelmere Ennis Avenue northbound between Simpson Avenue and Dixon Road, Rockingham Warton Road southbound at Armadale Road and Piara Waters.

The cyclone didn’t arrive, but the dam wall still broke as Fremantle ran over the top of Richmond with a dominant second half to win by 60 points at Optus Stadium

For a long time, it looked like Cyclone Narelle had still managed to destroy a game of footy despite the wind and rain staying away for most of the day, but Fremantle’s experience stood out after half-time as they won 13.25 (103) to 6.7 (43).

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The aftermath of the erratic storm that has flogged WA continues to rear its head.

Pictures show extensive damage, with one traveller hoping for clear skies going forward after losing the roof on their camper van.

Carnarvon farmers are left picking up the pieces to salvage what they can from their crops in the aftermath of Cyclone Narelle.

Sweeter Banana Co-operative business manager Doriana Mangili said their banana farm had copped significant damage with reports between 50 to 80 per cent of the crops were damaged.

Ms Mangili said the business was going through to see what could be saved and sold, but the impact was “utterly devastating”.

“Over the next couple of days, we’ll be trying to harvest what we can that’s fallen over that hasn’t been damaged, to try and get as much fruit off,” she said.

“We did pack everything as much as we could before the roads closed on Thursday to try and get as much fruit out as we could to keep the market going.

“This is our third extreme weather event this year, January we had a heat wave, February we had a cyclone now March we have a cyclone.

“We’re already at about 50 per cent of production capacity, we’re going to be looking at very, very low volume.”