There were no immediate reports of major damage from Cyclone Glenda, which hit the northwestern Pilbara region Thursday afternoon as a category four storm packing winds of up to 250 kilometers (150 miles) per hour.

But by morning Glenda had been downgraded to a category two with gusts of 150 kilometers per hour, the country's weather bureau said.

Emergency services officials said they had not yet been able to visit Onslow, a rural town of 800 which took the full brunt of the storm, to assess destruction there, but they had received no reports of serious damage. They did warn of the danger of severe flooding from torrential rains and a huge storm sea surge caused by Glenda.

The bureau of meteorology said Glenda was moving southwest back towards the Indian Ocean coast and could still do damage to banana crops in the region if its course shifted slightly westward.

Glenda was the second severe cyclone to hit Australia in two weeks after a maximum category five storm, Larry, slammed into the country's tropical northeast, causing extensive damage but no casualties.

There had been concern that Glenda would cause severe disruption to major iron ore, oil and gas mining and shipping operations centered in the Pilbara.

But the cyclone missed the key area of Karratha, the port and business hub of the region where several hundred people evacuated prior to the storm.

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Australian Bureau of Meteorology