Big big storm battering Queensland

Queensland's not unfamiliar with cyclones. They've copped some awful ones over the years.

Debbie's been downgraded to a category 3 after making landfall. Still vicious winds and rain, but better than the category 5 that had initally been anticipated.

Hope Helix and everyone else in QLD is safe and dry.

Hope our friends in Queensland are doing okay, and this storm doesn't cause too much damage.

Check in when you can--s6

Hello! I've been in Cairns and am now back on the Tablelands. Cairns was bloody hot yesterday and this morning, thanks to STC Debbie and it's a little bit breezy up here at the moment, courtesy of the same weather phenomenon. I watched a bit of the coverage yesterday. It seemed to be entirely made up of a) reporters who were unaware of STC Ului (2011) and TC Dylan (2013 or 2014), both of which made landfall in the same area; and b) PM Trumble telling someone -- his fellow pollies, I guess -- what people in Airlie and the Whitsundays should be doing. He couldn't have been addressing the folks in that area, because they had lost power some time before.

The real issue will be crops in the Bowen and Mackay region. The sugar cane will be fine, but there'll be tomato, capsicum and fruit farmers who'll have copped it bad.

I'll be down in Bowen next Thursday (6 April), so I'll report back.

Heya, Helix! I'm glad you weren't in Bowen this week.

At work yesterday, we were watching the rolling coverage and counting how many reporters were doing reports from the street/the beach to tell people to stay indoors. Freaking idiot TV networks.

I remember driving up the QLD coast not long after Yasi. I'll never forget the sight of trees growing at 40[SUP]o[/SUP] angles because of the winds they'd endured. I also remember the $12/kg bananas. Hopefully there's not too much crop damage this time round. Time will tell, I guess.

eta: blacbird, I think it's just under 400 miles or thereabouts.

Cairns is a fair distance -- 480km NNE NNW. We were treated to a lightning display from the outer edge of the storm proper last night. It was a fair way out to sea, but we could see the incandescence out behind Yarrabah.

In those eastern systems, the worst place to be is the SW quadrant, so the damage will extend much further south than it does north. When STC Yasi crossed in 2011, we were within the band of very destructive winds -- and it was rough and we had no power for five days -- but nothing like it was at the same distance on the other side of the eye.

The ridiculously high temperatures in Cairns come from the westerlies generated as the rotating system passes to the south. It's big enough to affect a very large area.

be frank said:

Heya, Helix! I'm glad you weren't in Bowen this week.

At work yesterday, we were watching the rolling coverage and counting how many reporters were doing reports from the street/the beach to tell people to stay indoors. Freaking idiot TV networks.

I remember driving up the QLD coast not long after Yasi. I'll never forget the sight of trees growing at 40[SUP]o[/SUP] angles because of the winds they'd endured. I also remember the $12/kg bananas. Hopefully there's not too much crop damage this time round. Time will tell, I guess.

eta: blacbird, I think it's just under 400 miles or thereabouts.

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Yeah, this was dangerously stupid. And the fact that Kochie wasn't impaled by a flying palm tree is proof that prayer doesn't work, IMO.

Glad you didn't blow away, Helix! Mackay caught the full SW edge of the storm (I take it that's where the most damage is because in a clockwise-rotating Southern Hemisphere storm that's where the winds will hit a N-S coast straight on). Will be interesting to see the damage tally.

Albedo said:

And the fact that Kochie wasn't impaled by a flying palm tree is proof that prayer doesn't work, IMO.

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Those on-scene crosses always make me think of this.

One of these days, a reporter is going to get badly injured and we'll get a live cross as they bleed to death because the ambulance can't get to them. F'wits.

Been watching radar and thinking folks.

The farmers, it's going to be so very hard on them.

blacbird said:

See, Helix, this is why people where I live have a completely different conception of the word "north". We here in Anchorage, Alaska, are getting snow today.

caw

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It's still in the same direction, though!

AW Admin said:

Been watching radar and thinking folks.

The farmers, it's going to be so very hard on them.

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Sure is.

ETA: In addition to current crops lost and damage to fruit trees, bat netting etc, the roads are cut by floodwaters, so they won't be able to distribute their products to markets in Brisbane and Townsville.

The tourist industry is going to be hit hard as well, methinks. The reef is already in terminal decline. Now with the damage to the coastal towns and particularly the marinas, and whatever's happened to the resort islands (most are still without power or water and cut off by rough seas, so who knows what the full damage is yet?), the recovery is going to be tough.

Had the cyclone come earlier in the season, the lowered temperatures and cloud cover might have reduced the effect of bleaching this year.

Bleaching? What is bleaching? --s6

Coral bleaching -- when persistent high water temperature causes the corals to lose their algal symbionts. (Reef-building corals -- also many soft corals, sea anemones and giant clams -- have algae within their cells. Although corals can survive for a time without the symbionts, they can't outcompete the larger algae that also grow on the reef. Over time, they are smothered and die.)

ETA: Here's a more detailed description: http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/managing-t...an-for-species/corals/what-is-coral-bleaching