Flooding in Australia

[Mad Mel]

Rut-roh.

[Skate around the circle]

It kinda looks like paradise has a bit of a price eh, Mel?

[Mad Mel]

Yeah, we'll be down to only 350 days of good weather this year.

[killer_carlson]

yikes.

Lets hope it heads back out to sea.....

[Mad Mel]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

yikes.

Lets hope it heads back out to sea.....

Not looking that way... batten down the hatches. In North Queensland that is, down here we'll probably get a good dump of rain, but miss the really bad wind and super-heavy rainfall. Maybe.

[T@T]

Cat 4 at landfall? Quite populated area in it's track, Townsville has around 200,000 I think.

How often does a hurricane..er cyclone hit Australia?

[Mad Mel]

^ It is very populated. I think Townsville is about 180,000, and Cairns (dead center of the BoM predicted track) is over 150,000.

Cyclones happen every year in the part of the tropics that N Qld falls in, but very rarely are they as bad as this one looks like it'll be.

[T@T]

Now a cat 5, this could be very brutal

[Mad Mel]

Originally Posted by T@T

Now a cat 5, this could be very brutal

If it's still Category 5 when it hits land, it will be, especially since it's expected to dump up to a metre of rain.

To wrap a little context around the significance of that, the 1959 Mexico hurrican is the only Pacific hurricane to reach landfall as a category 5, 13 Atlantic hurricanes have made landfall as category 5. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 at landfall with 30 cm of rain.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Mad Mel

If it's still Category 5 when it hits land, it will be, especially since it's expected to dump up to a metre of rain.

To wrap a little context around the significance of that, the 1959 Mexico hurrican is the only Pacific hurricane to reach landfall as a category 5, 13 Atlantic hurricanes have made landfall as category 5. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 at landfall with 30 cm of rain.

Hard to find any real info on this sucker but CNN is saying 165 mph sustained and 185 mph gusts. Every living thing better get the hell out of there. That kind of intensity will flatten just about every building not made out of concrete and depending on the tides up to 30 feet of storm surge.

[Ducay]

Word on the street is that Cairns is being evacuated.

[Mad Mel]

The good news: The BoM's weather station on Willis Island showed wind speeds of only 185 km/h a couple of hours ago. The bad news: Pretty meaningless data, since the cyclone took the weather station out after that.

[Ducay]

Wonder what the impact on the reefs is going to be, I would imagine such a weather event would cause some interesting currents and co-mingling of water temperatures.

[Mad Mel]

Interesting point, Ducay. The other thing that gets thrown in is that if there is a bunch of flooding, I'd imagine that there will be a bunch of silt being dumped out onto the GBR.

[Rutuu]

Originally Posted by Mad Mel

Yeah, we'll be down to only 350 days of good weather this year.

Flight leaves tomorrow for Brisbane...I'm still jacked about the move; it's too bad two of Queenslands largest natural disasters had to hit this month.

[Mad Mel]

Originally Posted by Rutuu

Flight leaves tomorrow for Brisbane...I'm still jacked about the move; it's too bad two of Queenslands largest natural disasters had to hit this month.

A guy arrived at my office yesterday from Calgary, who's moving here in a couple of months. He's quite enjoying the sunny weather that's close to 60° warmer than when he left home the other day.

[surferguy]

That is one MONSTER of a storm!

[flylock shox]

Wave surge of up to 9.5 meters apparently.

Probably won't have any idea how bad this is until this thing is pretty much dissipated. Doesn't sound like there's much in the way of communication with affected areas.

[T@T]

This says it all, perfect eyewall

[T@T]

News starting to trickle in.

INNISFAIL, Australia (AFP) – A terrifying top-strength cyclone slammed into Australia's populous northeast coast Thursday, with officials warning it could be one of the most lethal storms in the nation's history.
Howling winds whipped up by Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi with speeds of up to 290 kilometres (181 miles) per hour ripped off roofs, felled trees and cut power supplies as the storm crossed the Queensland coast.


The storm's size and power dwarfs Cyclone Tracy, which hit the northern Australian city of Darwin in 1974, killing 71 people and flattening more than 90 percent of its houses. It is also twice the size and far stronger than the category four Cyclone Larry that caused Aus$1.5 billion ($1.5 billion) of damage after hitting agricultural areas around Innisfail, just south of Cairns, in 2006.

"This is probably the worst cyclone that our nation has ever seen,"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110202...20110202162400

A satellite phone report on CNN said a shelter with over 500 people inside had it's roof blown off but didn't know if there were any injuries.