A tiny town known as "cyclone city" on Australia's remote northwest coast was being lashed by winds of up to 235 kmh late Thursday as a severe tropical cyclone slammed ashore from the Indian Ocean.

Tropical cyclone Glenda, the second destructive storm to hit Australia in 10 days, had earlier forced the evacuation of hundreds of people in larger towns, shut down oil and gas rigs and disrupted iron ore shipments in the region.

Meteorologists said the eye of the cyclone passed over the town of Onslow, 1,390 kilometers north of the Western Australia state capital of Perth, at 9 PM local time (15:00 GMT).

"It was really, really creepy. Before it was hammering down and we had winds gusting in ... and now it's absolutely dead still," one unidentified Onslow resident told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

The category four cyclone, one below the maximum grade, stalled briefly as it crossed the remote and sparsely populated coastline but was expected to resume moving southwest through the ruggedly beautiful Pilbara region.

"Residents of Onslow are warned that very destructive winds will soon resume without warning from a different direction," Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said.

There were no immediate reports of damage from Onslow.

Towns further north such as Dampier and the iron ore and tourism hub of Karratha earlier reported that trees and power lines had been brought down and roads cut by flooding after they were sideswiped by Glenda.

Founded by graziers in the 1880s, Onslow has a population of about 800 and is known locally as "cyclone city" for the frequency of major storms.

(China Daily March 31, 2006)