Cyclone Yasi

[rcon]

Found this live coverage on Yasi.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/nort ... 5997552623

Its on a news ltd site so its not perfect "blog" but some interesting facts on there already.

9.49am NASA reports Cyclone Yasi is creating 11.5m waves in the Coral Sea. "Infrared imagery suggests that the storm appears to fill up most of the Coral Sea, and provided scientists with a 10 nautical mile-wide eye measurement of the storm. "

9.30am Wind gusts are reaching 140km/h at Willis Island off the coast of Queensland. The tiny island is in the direct path of the cyclone and is home to a Bureau of Meteorology weather station. Three bureau staff have been evacuated.

Twitter has more good stuff on there.

My cousin is in North QLD, but I think he has flights from Townsville to Bris today, a day early - boss given him an extra day in bris to sightsee flood damnage. Poor bastards.

Anyone got any family up there? I'm sure some of our QLD people would have, and I know someone's mum is in karanda, just up the hill from Cairns.

[bennymacca]

i have an uncle at sarina, near mackay, so i think thats a little bit south of where the cyclone is due to come ashore, but they are still going to get flooded i would think

[bennymacca]

willis island radar

pretty crazy looking, seems to have been a direct hit on it.

willis.JPG (50.05 KiB) Viewed 649 times

[rcon]

#TCYasis seems to be the hastag for twitter

http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23tcyasi

edit: Yeah, BOM says they've had nothing for like 40 min from there and they think its been destroyed.

[rcon]

http://www.hurricanezone.net/#11p

[bennymacca]

this is a map of significant wage height.

[rcon]

Only a 100ish km smaller in size than Katrina and winds about 60km slower (340v280)

[Caleb]

Cairns has been evacuated. For the first time in Queensland history a hospital has been cleared out and evaced to Brisbane. The CBD is a ghost town except for the Army.

Mum is up on her hill and storm ready. Fully supplied, safe from floods. Might be some damage from the winds, but it will be limited. They think the "Range", the 15km mountain road connecting Cairns and Kuranda could be closed for up to a week.

Those down on the flat won't be so lucky. They believe this will be the most devastating cyclone to ever hit Australia.

Don't be suprised if Cairns is leveled. Luckily it's on a flood plain so the water will subside quickly but there is still massive damage possible.

[bennymacca]

hope your mother and everyone else up there is ok, damage to houses is nothing, hopefully the loss of life is minimum.

[Caleb]

Easiest way to describe Kuranda is like saying it's like Mt. Barker compared to the CBD.

It's 26 km from the CBD, up a 15 km Mountain road, 330m above sea level and completely surrounded on all sides by rainforest.

The one issue they'll have is the wind sending branches flying. Apart from that they should be fine.