Replies to post #126310 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Queensland, Australia slammed by cyclone


On Feb. 2 at 03:35 UTC / 1:35 p.m. Australia local time, the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Cyclone Yasi making landfall in [actually no, core still hours offshore] Queensland, Australia.
Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team.

By Jason Samenow
Posted at 12:45 PM ET, 02/ 3/2011

Wednesday morning (Eastern Time), cyclone Yasi made landfall as a powerful Category Four storm (Category 5 on Australia's scale [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_scales#Australia ]) along Australia's northeastern coast in Queensland with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph. (What we call hurricanes, Australians call cyclones).

Peak 3-sec wind gusts of about 170 mph were recorded near Mission Beach where the storm came ashore according to Reuters [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/insured-losses-yasi-idUSLDE7121NR20110203 ].

Reuters also reports Yasi is expected to cost insurers around AUS $3.5 billion, the second most damaging Australian cyclone on record after cyclone Tracy which struck Darwin in 1974. ABC News Australia posted an incredible photo gallery [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/cyclone-yasi/gallery.htm ] of some of the devastation in the region.

The Associated Press reports [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/03/AR2011020300604.html ] that amazingly the large, intense storm, equivalent to the size of Italy, has resulted in no deaths:

Officials said lives were spared because, after days of increasingly dire warnings, people followed instructions to flee to evacuation centers or bunker themselves at home in dozens of cities and towns in Yasi's path.

In addition, the heart of the storm missed the region's most populated areas according to reports.

While the storm's worst rains are north of the same area inundated by severe flooding in recent months, numerous flood warnings [ http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20885.html ] are currently in effect for parts of Queensland.

ABC News Australia has the latest on Yasi [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/04/3129547.htm ] - now classified as remnant low.

© 2011 The Washington Post Company

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2011/02/queensland_australia_slammed_b.html [with comments]

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Australian rats scurry to desert en masse after rains
6 April 2011
A mass migration of rats is under way into the inland deserts of Australia after a run of high rainfall seasons, scientists say.
The native long-haired rat, or Rattus villosissimus, normally lives in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory and in western Queensland.
But now it has been spotted in Alice Springs for the first time in 25 years.
"Some of them get up to about 30cm [12in] long - fair lump of a rat," livestock manager Chris Giles said.
[...]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12994713