Mahina struck Bathurst Bay, Cape York Peninsula, colonial Queensland, on 4 March 1899, and its winds and enormous storm surge combined to kill more than 300 people.

Scientists identified two other Category 4 or 5 super-cyclones that struck Australia, in the first half of the 19th century, from their effects on the Great Barrier Reef and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

They also surveyed the area, seeking wave-cut escarpments and deposits characteristic of storm events, but found none higher than 5 metres (16 ft).

[13] The cyclone continued southwest over Cape York Peninsula, emerging over the Gulf of Carpentaria, before doubling back and dissipating on 10 March.

[18] People found thousands of fish and some sharks and dolphins several kilometres (miles) inland, and the storm embedded rocks into trees and bushes.

At Cape Melville, survivors erected a memorial stone to "The Pearlers" lost to the cyclone, naming 11 Europeans but only citing "over 300 coloured men" for the other seamen.

[25][26][27] More modern reports of an 18 inches of mercury (610 hPa) observation on a vessel in the eye of Mahina are unrealistic (the most intense tropical cyclone, Typhoon Tip, had a central pressure 260 hectopascals (7.68 inHg) higher).

[8] A study in 2014 found that the actual lowest pressure of the storm was around 880 hectopascals (26 inHg), based upon modeling of meteorological variables needed to induce the potentially world-record-setting surge height of 13 metres (43 ft).

This surge closely matches new evidence on storm depositions and accounts actually reported to two other captains, and in a letter from an eyewitness to his parents, of a reading of 26 inches of mercury (880 hPa).

This study considers the apparently third-hand report of 27 inches of mercury (914 hPa) an unreliable measurement made possibly five hours prior to passage of the eye.

Barometric pressure this low at mean sea level also likely caused Cyclone Mahina to create such an intense, phenomenal, claimed world-record storm surge that was not immediately known afterward.