Tropical Cyclone Laurence ripped up trees and damaged buildings as winds of up to 215 kilometres (133 miles) an hour tore into the Western Australian coast, officials said Tuesday.

The storm had been at the highest rating of Category 5 when it smashed inland late Monday, battering the small communities of Eighty Mile Beach and Wallal in the resource-rich Pilbara and Kimberley region.

Sarah Edmunds, who lives on a cattle station south of the coastal resort town of Broome, described the overnight storm as "nerve-racking".

"We could see like bits of metal and tin just like flying past which wasn't too good," she said.

"This morning I walked out and I didn't recognise the place, the trees have fallen down and grass has been stripped," she told ABC radio.

Western Australia's Fire and Emergency Services Authority said there were no reports of loss of life or injury, but that buildings and farms had been damaged and hundreds of stock animals were feared to have died in the storm.

"Eighty Mile Beach appears to have suffered the most damage because we have reports that everything was flattened there," the authority's Les Hayter told AFP.

The storm, which prompted the closure of the major iron ore export facility Port Hedland and Newcrest Mining's Telfer gold mine, was downgraded to a Category 3 storm early Tuesday and was expected to weaken as it moved inland.

The Port Hedland terminal reopened after the cyclone passed, while Newcrest, which has evacuated all staff from the Telfer site, said it expected to restart production on Wednesday.

"Port Hedland has resumed normal operations. We expect to have all berths operational by the end of the day," a port spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires.

Despite the threat downgrade, residents of the Pilbara have been warned that destructive winds of up to 165 kilometres an hour are still possible near the storm centre.

"People just need to sit tight, wait for the cyclone to pass, and then watch out for rising rivers and creeks," State Emergency Services spokesman Allen Gale said.

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