Ilsa reached the highest Category 5 intensity Thursday over the Indian Ocean and is expected to maintain that destructive level as it crosses the Pilbara coast by early Friday.

At 1 p.m. AWST, Damien was a Category 3 storm, expecting to bring winds with gusts up to 220 kilometres per hour near its centre when crossing the coast later on Saturday, the Bureau of Meteorology in Western Australia said.

Thousands of people began evacuating low-lying areas of Australia's tropical northeast on Monday as a powerful cyclone bore down on the coast.