Looking a bit dodgy in Cairns at the moment!

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ65002.shtml

Hope it all works out. I live at Kewarra Beach (one of the better positioned beaches for this sort of thing) but we're waiting to see if we have to evacuate nland a bit at the moment.

If the red bit (280kph winds) impacts on Cairns it could be really nasty!

What category is it?

Looks like a Cat-4

Yeh Cat 4, possibility of it hitting 5 by the time it lands as its still intensifying and is quite a low pressure system (low 900s).

Also BOM.gov.au is pissing me off... anyone else notice that the radar never seems to display accurately over Brisbane anymore?

Makes me sad and stuff.

Lucky it is not cat 5 or it could seriously damage your infrastructure network.

its now been upgraded to a cat 5

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18529509-2,00.html



last edited by d[o_0]b at 09:06:18 20/Mar/06

It said on Sunrise it was downgraded to a cat 4. Confused me since lazt I heard it was a 3 Thought the system was arse about

Yeah, storms will continue to get worse as long as there is a steady flow of warm moist air up into them from the ground. With a cyclone, because it forms out over the warm tropical oceans, where there is nothing but warm humid air, it gets worse and worse and worse, as long as it is at sea. When it crosses the coast or drifts too far south (where the air isn't as warm or humid) it starts to get weaker.

This cyclone, went up rapidly yesterday from 3 to 4 and then hit 5 early this morning just before it crossed the coast. Once it crossed the coast, it started weakening immediately, and went back down to 4 after it had passed innisfail, and is expected to continue going down, to like a cat 1 by 8pm and then die completely overnight. Then the only thing left is for all the water that it sucked up to come down as rain over the next week.

last edited by hUON at 10:28:38 20/Mar/06

There is a second cyclone over near Fiji headed our way.

Poor FNQ!

yer, turns out this one was pretty bad!

talked to my olds last nite and they still had no power

apparenlty between 6am and 7am in cairns it was mitey scary!
even scarier on the tablelands (which is a bit weird)

i remember cyclone winifred, that was probably the last big cyclone that hit cairns while i was there

There is a second cyclone over near Fiji headed our way.

That one didn't end up hitting our coastline, did it?

That one didn't end up hitting our coastline, did it?

It's headed our way, and therefore hasn't hit our coastline YET.

Hmm apparently the biggest cyclone since 1918 or somesuch, apparently it was bigger than America's Katrina?

Sucks to be living in Innisfail (the area where it hit) though, population of 3000, maybe 1000 houses, 118 or so of them lost their roofs. Winds in excess of 300k per hr, shame the category system is so limited in describing just how nasty things can get.

cat 5 >= 250km/hr

Katrina was a hurricane though, noob question then but whats the difference between a cyclone and a hurricane?

Having lived in Darwin I've been through MANY cyclones.

last edited by Tanaka Khan at 14:13:12 21/Mar/06

I did a search and the difference is one happens in the northern hemp and goes one way and cyclones are in the southern hemp and go the other way

A Tropical Storms are also known as Hurricanes (Atlantic), Tropical Cyclones (South East Asia), Willy Willies (Australia) and Typhoons (Pacific).

Google is my friend.

What is a hurricane, typhoon, or tropical cyclone?
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/A1.html

man this giant willy just destroyed my town!

I thought "willy willies" were just sposed to be a term kids used to describe those little tiny winds you see picking up leaves in a circle like a very mini-cyclone.

I couldn't really see anyone saying "MY GOD, LOOK AT THE RADAR! IT'S A GIANT WILLY WILLY THING!"

last edited by Loki at 15:43:40 21/Mar/06

i agree loki, same here.
also apperently that whole water spins different ways in the 2 hemisphreres was a load of bullshism.

also apperently that whole water spins different ways in the 2 hemisphreres was a load of bullshism.

It isn't.

u sure?

i'm talking about in toilet bowls and sinks and things though, not cyclone/hurricane. dunno bout them.

Wait, it is :P

That'll learn me for not googling before I opens my mouth (and also listening to the simpsons)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect

and

http://www.eoascientific.com/campus/earth/multimedia/coriolis/view_interactive



last edited by Agent 99 at 18:42:48 21/Mar/06

Yeh that was the article I owned myself with.