Residents flee as worst cyclone in decades heads for Australian coast...

I can't find anything to support the claim made by these news agencies that this storm is a category 5. The only thing I can find supports it being a category 3 with 115mph sustained winds.

www.wunderground.com...

Can anyone post a source that shows this storm having sustained winds of 156+ mph? Wind gusts do not determine the classification. At least not in this part of the world. 111 to 130mph is a cat 3. So this would be on the lower end of a cat 3.

www.abc.net.au...

Innisfail and the surrounding areas south of Cairns were the worst hit when Larry crossed the coast this morning as a category five system with winds up to 290 kilometres an hour.

Cyclone Larry apparently crossed the coastline of Queensland (QLD) early this morning (AEDST). This cyclone was the worst that QLD has ever seen, and has been reffered to as the 'Tracey' of Queensland - a reference to the 1975 Cyclone that all but destroyed Darwin, in the Northern Territory.

Approximatly 200,000 people have been affected by the ferocity of Larry.

Godspeed to the rescuers, and lets hope that Wati dies before making it to the north-eastern coast, otherwise this could get a lot worse.

I heard at 6am ET that 1,000's were homeless.

Originally posted by Indy
I can't find anything to support the claim made by these news agencies that this storm is a category 5.

Cyclone catagories are based on gusts in Australia, not sustained winds.
www.bom.gov.au...

Cyclone Larry had gusts of 290kph.





[edit on 20-3-2006 by Regenmacher]

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Picture: flying debris in Edmonton, by Andrew Szczurowski

FAR north Queensland is still reeling after a category-five cyclone likened to an atomic bomb ripped through the area yesterday morning, damaging thousands of buildings and devastating crops.

Hundreds of millions of dollars damage was inflicted as the category-five storm - the strongest possible - also destroyed most of Australia's banana crop and flattened sugar cane fields.

Larry was downgraded from category-five to category-two as it slowly moved inland yesterday, weakening all the time.

But authorities last night warned residents to beware the dangers of flooding, and cautioned against venomous snakes and crocodiles shaken up by the storm.

Please, follow the link for a full information of the above mentioned extracted from the following source: Australia news

[edit on 20-3-2006 by Ptolomeo]

cyclone lary was only 50 kilometres wide and was downgraded to category 4 before it even hit the north queensland coast.......ZERO fatalities.....
i was on the mobile [phone to my good mate terence who was at work as per usual at his carsales yard in cairns during the cyclone...playing cards and just chatting away....
i used to live in cairns and was a car salesman too when cyclone with 160km/hr winds hit in around 1998...no fatalities no big deal....aluminium shopsigns and roofs did get blown off then too along with some trees blown over that were not the supple-trunked native trees to that area....

another over-blown media beat-up with tv stories of frail old pensioners cowering in churches praying for survival....what a load of crap....

did you notice that not one single second of tv footage was shot with a wide camera angle???? thats because the viewer would then have seen civillians cruising around in their cars/ munching on a hamburger while they strolled down the main streeet etc etc....so the tv cameras only showed close-ups with nervous loooking reporters who probably pissed themselves laughing and waddled back to the pub in between live feeds....

yeah so some trees blew over and roofs lifted off...big freakin deal....

cheers
postgradspy
queensland
australia

A friend of mine from Australia told me the following on the 19th:

Well our first real cyclone for the season, in fact for some years is hitting Nth Queensland. They reckon that it is a category 5, stronger even that Cyclone Tracey that flattened Darwin in 1974. It is expected to cross the coast in about an hour. Many buildings have already been devasted & I believe people are trapped beneath the debris. All of the Whitsunday Islands have been evacuated as are low lying areas near the coast. It is situated about 1,000 K's north of here & is not expected to travel any further south but you can never tell with these storms. It also covers a huge area.

...

Is Hurrican-Seasion already on?

Originally posted by Indy
Can anyone post a source that shows this storm having sustained winds of 156+ mph? Wind gusts do not determine the classification. At least not in this part of the world. 111 to 130mph is a cat 3. So this would be on the lower end of a cat 3.

The base their categories on wind gust, and the estimated top gusts were around 175-180mph. I cant find the source now but I saw a report of 920hPA surface pressure which would indicate a strong cat4-cat 5 storm, that pressure is about the same as Andrew in '92.

This a link to the Australian news, there should be some info on the top strength somewhere:
www.abc.net.au...

I'd like to point out to the poeple who aren't from Australia that this isn't all that unusual and not very many poeple live up in that area.

I'll give you guys a little lesson about Australia.

#1 Australia is pronounced like Ozstraylia, Aussie is pronounced like Ozzy.

#2 Most Australians are situated in Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide or Sydney, all of which are situated south of this cyclone

#3 Unlike America, Australia doesn't really have inland cities (except Canberra. Most Cities are situated in the South-East Coast of Australia.

#4 Australia really only has 8 or so Cities

#5 America made Steve Irwin popular, not us.

#6 Hardly anyone really says "crikey".

I'd like to point out to the poeple who aren't from Australia that this isn't all that unusual and not very many poeple live up in that area.

I'll give you guys a little lesson about Australia.

#1 Australia is pronounced like Ozstraylia, Aussie is pronounced like Ozzy.

Ok but why do you call a person from Queensland a "banana bender?" And would that be pronounced nana ender? [source]

#5 America made Steve Irwin popular, not us.

Ok but who takes the blame for Crocodile Dundee?

#6 Hardly anyone really says "crikey".

I refuse to believe that... "crikey", "Gday" and "put another shrimp on the barby" are not included in every sentence, i'm pretty sure that's scientific fact. Don't try and spread your Ozzy disinformation here bud... stereotype stands.

Glad to hear that most everybody is safe, and living in Florida i can relate to the extra hype these big storms seem to bring along with them. Had this storm hit your area this would have been a big deal though, no?

Glad to hear that most everybody is safe, and living in Florida i can relate to the extra hype these big storms seem to bring along with them. Had this storm hit your area this would have been a big deal though, no?

Yeah, all storms bring a lot of hype, but with you being from Orlando I can assure you have never really seen what they bring. Take a look at coastal area that gets the wrose of even a modest storm and you can through all the hype out the window, even if it is only a stretch of 20miles or less that really gets ravaged.





What about vegemite mate? How can you'll down under stomach that stuff?

Originally posted by Rren


Ok but why do you call a person from Queensland a "banana bender?" And would that be pronounced nana ender? [source]

No, that's just silly. Hardly anyone except poeple from Queensland and the outback (I threw in that Australianism just for you) say these crazy phrases and such. Oh, sure you may get the occasional "character" (or larrikin, which is another Australian word) in the suburbs (or outer-suburbs where I live) who use these words, but most poeple are really just as indifferent to them as you, i guess. Older poeple seem to use them alot more though. I read something about Australian slang once and it said a lot of them have origins in England. I guess this is one reason why older poeple use these much more than everyone else. Another reason is the media we get from other country and the global media-ness.

I got another myth I wanna dispell (even though i don't think many poeple really beleive it strongly). Most Australians aren't descendants from convicts.

Originally posted by Rren

#5 America made Steve Irwin popular, not us.

Ok but who takes the blame for Crocodile Dundee?

#6 Hardly anyone really says "crikey".

I refuse to believe that... "crikey", "Gday" and "put another shrimp on the barby" are not included in every sentence, i'm pretty sure that's scientific fact. Don't try and spread your Ozzy disinformation here bud... stereotype stands.

I blame that guy who Crocadile Dundee was based on, the poeple who produced the movie and the Australian government for promoting it.

Have any of you poeple who aren't from Australia seen the new "Where the bloody hell are you?" ads?

Originally posted by Rren
Glad to hear that most everybody is safe, and living in Florida i can relate to the extra hype these big storms seem to bring along with them. Had this storm hit your area this would have been a big deal though, no?

Well, ofcourse.

And to the guy who said something about Vegemite, you've just inspired me to have a vegemite roll,
but not a sandwhich, they're horrible.