It's coming in tonight as I type and between Cairns and Townsville basically. Some towns have been *totally* evacuated. Winds will be in excess of 300km/hr and in some places the waves will be 7 metres high.
If anyone is interested in listening you can tune into

http://www.abc.net.au/local/players/stre...Yasi%20coverage

Roofs are coming off and the cyclone is still a long way off the coast; 90,000 people without power + another 30k while I am typing. There was an 18 metre wave and then they finish the bulletin with 'and in the south (Brisbane) it will be fine and sunny'. Wouldn't that rot your socks.


The weather bureau has just announced it will go inland all the way to the Northern Territory and people should be preparing already for that eventuality. That's a long way away even by Australian standards.

By the time it gets that far inland, it'd be like hitting Dallas here...nothing more than a whimper. Hope the ones in northern Queensland stay safe and don't have too much damage.

A Category 5 cyclone has winds in excess of 156mph (250km/h), and the winds by what Exit10 is saying, would be about what the peak strength of "Wilma" in 2005 (that hurricane peaked at 185mph) and "Mitch" in 1998.

On top of all that flooding, this is just what Queensland doesn't need.

I do hope our members, their families and friends are safe.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that they set up 7 evacuation centres in Cairns and residents were told that they had to leave their animals behind and hope for the best. I think that would be heartbreaking. Next bulletin in half an hour but the eye is expected to cross the coast in half an hour in a little place called Mission Beach.

Well the ABC Radio just dropped out!

I'll see if I can find another but I don't think I will be successful.


Edit: I lied, they got their feed back.

Yasi is going to be incredibly violent and widespread. Here's a graphic that spells out the horror of it all for me. It's a map of Oz pasted over a map of the USA and the UK is in there too. Yasi is pasted next to the east coast. I thought at first that it was slightly exaggerated but from reading comments on another blog it appears to be an accurate representation as per scientists and meteorologists. Truly frightening. Apparently Oz and the US use different scales for category classifications and Australia uses slightly slower wind speeds to assign a cyclone as Category 5. I think Yasi hits the heights with horrid windspeeds on either scale though. I remember Cyclone Tracy hitting Darwin when I was 12 yrs old. She was violent but small. She happened to hit an urban area hence the damage. Yasi is massive...

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/02/yasi-2011-cyclonic-force-of-nature/

That's a great scale comparison map Tizzabelle.

The eye has moved through Mission Beach and has started all the wind/rain of the tail end which will be going for the next few hours.



Having seen the scale map of Tizzabelle's and the Category 1 forecast to arrive inland on 4 Feb that's a long way for a cyclone to travel.

Wow... about half part seven in the morning in Qld and so far no reports of serious injuries or deaths! There may well be some amongst those stubborn enough to want to ride the storm out in their beach houses but for the major centres to have nothing serious happen is brilliant. There was a baby born in an evacuation centre this am. What a day to give birth! I've heard of lots of damage to property but the best story I heard was a local mayor sheltering with his family in his mother-in-law's double brick house. They heard something but it was fairly indistinct in the roaring winds. It was the roof being ripped off!

I saw a bloke from the Weather Channel early this am. He said Yasi might well still be Category 1 by the time she hits the Alice and she may go on to dump rain in Esperance in south-west WA. That is one hell of a lot of water.

A lot of that depends on how fast the cyclone is moving. Faster moving storms will be stronger inland. I never said it was out of the question that a Category 1 (74-95mph (119-153kph)) hurricane could hit Dallas (I am 300 miles (480km) inland from the Gulf).

Yes, I was basing the wind speed of "Yasi" off of the Saffir-Simpson scale which is used in the USA. I still remember "Wilma" from 2005 sitting parked just off the Yucatan, and she dumped 62" (1.57m) of rain in the same area. The top 1-minute sustained wind speed on "Wilma" was measured at 185mph (300kph) with gusts over 210mph (348kph). By the time they finally quit watching "Ike" in 2008, it had gone into Canada still as a cyclone, however, it was an extratropical cyclone. Ike's winds were still hurricane force in Tyler, TX, a mere 100 miles east of me on Interstate 20.

Story on Hurricane "Ike" from 2008

Differences in the cyclone scales used by Australia, USA, India, etc.

My storms bigger than yours?!

All storms of similar magnitude are awful. Best wishes to folks and wildlife who may be affected, sigh.

According to this, Yasi would have just missed Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale used here in the USA, which goes off the highest 1-minute sustained winds, which were at 155mph (250kph). Hopefully everyone is ok and there's not a major cleanup. According to that link, one has been confirmed dead.

It's still hovering around and dropping rain. When it came through here yesterday afternoon it had winds gusting to a measley 70km and it knocked down a couple limbs in the yard. I just can not imagine what it must have been like in the category 5 part of it. Anna Bligh is coming across well, isn't she? Right mix of toughness and emotion in all these QLD dramas. Exit? What do the QLDers think of her?
She could teach Kristina a thing or two.

I am sick of the word "resilient" and any of it's spin offs.

Credit has to go to the "authorities" with such a low injury and death total. I think the one who died, Dave, had a generator going in his room and was knocked out by the fumes. (duh)

lol @ Q

Copago, I am not a Bananabender, but am overwhelmed by Anna Bligh - just awesome.
Could also teach our PM a thing or two.
There is something in the air in southern WA... the black cockies are around.. the ants are going ballistic .. it's supposed to be summer, but I had a heater on last night..we last had February floods in 1982.. and before that, I think 1956...


And they are talking "YEARS" to clean up..and into the billions of dollars.

With any luck she'd teach Julia how to speak.

There were people saying they were still getting on their feet after Larry.

Anna Bligh(Queensland Premier) suspended being a politician and became a stateswoman. Hour after hour, she stood up and gave the truth, warts and all. Obviously there was an efficient team behind her, but I'm sure lives were saved because of the information and advice she was able to impart so credibly.
Ms Bligh is worthy of rising above party politics, if given the opportunity.

Julia Gillard (Australian Prime Minister) is "on a hiding to nothing". If she had taken a higher profile in Queensland, she would have been accused of politicizing or grandstanding. She expressed regret for loss of life and property, mobilised Defence personnel, and assured Queensland of ongoing support.
What other federal politician might have done a better job in those circumstances?

Wasn't Anna Bligh magnificent? I don't agree with a lot of her politics but she was brilliant! I want to give her the biggest *HUG*. The best thing was that she was a natural at leading everyone through it all. She spoke from the heart when talking of the people that had suffered, she had no notes when talking of the personnel and equipment involved because she was on top of it all, and she proved to be a real person. Julia? Apparently she is lovely when you meet her.. she's warm and funny and caring. Put her in front of a camera and she changes into a robot. She probably tries so hard to get it right that everything she speaks comes out stilted, unnatural and incredibly annoying. Anna Bligh must have some of her ancestor Captain William Bligh's genes in her. Both strong and irrepressible in the face of a crisis!

"What other federal politician might have done a better job in those circumstances?" Not Kevin-Kevin Rudd who would have taken over and pushed Anna Bligh aside! I know it was the team behind Bligh and Gillard who saved the day but Bligh was a "leader". Remember Sir William Deane when he was GG? Australia has some awful tragedies when he was GG but he was a natural at speaking to and of those involved, and at the services to commemorate people lost in various incidents. Apparently an all-round good guy with a heart as big as Phar Lap who spoke from the heart and somehow made Australia feel better. A few people have it and many don't.