"Perfect storm" brews over Australia's west

SYDNEY, Jan 3 (Reuters) Tropical Cyclone Isobel crossed the northwest Australian coast today, causing little damage, but weather forecasters warned it may now link up with a deep depression inland to create a destructive ''perfect storm''.

''It's one of the few occasions as a forecaster that you really do hope your forecast is wrong,'' Australia's Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Grant Elliott told local radio.

''But unfortunately indications are that it's going to be a very significant, perhaps a once-in-a-generation, storm for this time of year,'' said Elliott.

Cyclone Isobel, Australia's first tropical cyclone of the season, was rated category one, the lowest in a five-point scale, with winds of up to 100 km per hour near its centre.

Isobel caused little damage in sparsely populated Western Australia state but temporarily disrupted offshore oil production by Woodside Petroleum Ltd. and Santos Ltd.

It is expected to weaken below cyclone strength within a few hours as it moves south. But the bureau said remnants of the cyclone will join an inland storm, creating a new destructive storm late today or tomorrow over Australia's major goldfields in the south of Western Australia.

''We're expecting some quite exceptional winds tomorrow, perhaps reaching 100 to 120 km per hour, so there'll be localised damaging winds and the risk of quite significant livestock losses with the combination of rain and wind producing hypothermia,'' said the bureau's Elliott.

REUTERS SP RK1225