Posted on 02/02/2011 1:19:34 PM PST by jimt
The residents of North Queensland are assessing the damage after cyclone Yasi, the largest tropical storm to strike Australia since Europeans first settled there, created winds of 186mph and waves more than 9m high.
As meteorologists predicted, it was midnight when the destructive core of the category five cyclone crossed the coast at Mission Beach, a small resort where two World Heritage sites meet, 30 miles south of the town of Innisfail.
Thousands of the 400,000 people living in the path of the 300-mile wide cyclone spent a sleepless night in hot and crowded emergency evacuation centres set up in primary schools and shopping centres deemed strong enough to withstand the cyclone and avoid storm surges up to 8m high.
Roofs were torn off pubs and houses in Ingham and Innisfail, which was flattened by cyclone Larry five years ago. Locals said Yasi had already caused more damage than Larry, which wrecked 10,000 homes but did not cause any fatalities.
In Tully, where about 60 terrified backpackers sheltered in a pub as rainwater swept through the doors, local councillor Ross Sorbello ventured out of the car in which he was sheltering during the eye of the storm.
"It is just a scene of mass devastation," he said. "Larry was a boy compared to this."...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
30 foot waves? I thought we had surf on the left coast!
The Yassidis were these people in Turkey who believed anything bad happening to you was a sign that God hated you.
I hardly think that they would named this hurricane after anything else,given what is going on in that area.I highly doubt that Australia itself though is on anyone’s first and last hit list.
I wonder if the Axis shift is causing all this amazing weather.
“The planet was jolted to its roots. A chunk of the Earth’s mass was redistributed vertically, which caused the planet’s figure axis—on which the Earth’s mass is balanced—to move by about three inches, according to calculations by NASA scientist Richard Gross. The net effect of that mass redistribution made the earth spin slightly faster, just as a figure skater speeds up when she pulls in her arms.
“It’s important for us to know how the earth’s rotation changes,” said Dr. Gross, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It helps us figure out where a spacecraft is and to navigate it for a precise pinpoint landing” on Mars, the moon or another planet. Dr. Gross and his colleagues had conducted a similar analysis following the even bigger 9.1-magnitude quake in Indonesia. They found that the 2004 temblor decreased the length of a day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted the North Pole by a few centimeters.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704486504575098083228068948.html
The Bali bombings were aimed at Australians in large part, because it’s sort of like Cancun or Cozumel is to Americans. There have been many thwarted attempts at terrorist activity in Australia, at least while I was there and following the news. I don’t think many would have made the news outside Australia since in the end nothing happened, but they were horrific things planned.
They dodged a bullet, had the eye gone over Cairns or Townsville, the damage would have been catastrophic, it went over areas not nearly as densely populated.
I’m glad it happened that way. After all the flooding, this is the last thing they needed. 186 mph !!
The mess, even after a wimpy hurricane like Ike, is unbelievable unless you’ve seen it. Power lines down, trees down, houses missing shingles or whole roofs, the streets full of debris, traffic signals out - I could go on and on.
When Ike hit here it was only 102 mph. But it destroyed a good chunk of Galveston and messed up Houston (40 miles inland) fairly well.
Hopes and prayers for our Aussie friends.
Just showed from pics from Tully. They got clobbered.
What a mess !
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