Tropical Cyclone Larry in Coral Sea - TOP PRIORITY

Ooops. I saw the note on Cyclone’s weather page about the damaged weather station, but didn’t follow the link to his alternative “live” page. Not sure whether the reading of 106 kmh was before he lost the anemometer or after …
Still, you guys have access to local news sources in Oz. What’s happenin’ around the Cape York Pen.?

Good Afternoon all,

Was awake all night 8O

will post more info later

it’s heading in a westerly direction, now a cat 2 storm, and as you can see on the BOM site, its mostly missed the Cape though, but is going to affect towns south of the Gulf.

I hope! There’s a chance… but most likely if any chance, as a extratropical depression. :slight_smile:

Depending upon if you can get a internet connection going… I’m aware that AAPT’s PoP in Cairns is or was out of action from around 2pm today, so chances are many other places might be in a similar situation.

Thanks for the sat. pics Cyclone.
This forum is so noisy that I usually look around with my browser set to accept images from the orginating server only (poor challenged dial-up type) but I was intrigued by your blank post … so I accepted images from other servers.
Interesting result …
Yikes! I got sat image 2 and 3 which looked as if the storm had blown the entire cape westwards (ignoring the rotation of the images)
THAT would be an impressive storm!
On logging in I got the third image which made the sequence obvious.
whew! :roll:

Time to hunt for your missing anemometer cups?
Presume the 106 km/h reading was its last farewell gesture…

We haven’t heard from Qwarla (Townsville) so hope he will report in.

Hi
I talked to Cyclone by phone as it passed as close it was going to get to him, at 9am
he had been up all night!
trees down at his place
watched some news footage here 2 nite
1 in 3 houses have no roof in the affected area
roads blocked by trees and building material (roofs/walls)
crops (banannas, etc) wiped out
millions of dollars damage
it was a big one!
but no deaths reported so far, so thats good

106 km/h = 11 Bft (from 12 !) almost maximum force !
At MML no such windforces by damaged weatherstation as I noticed…
pitty… (that’s the weatherman in me 8O)

Seen the video’s here, be strong guys !

Hi
winds of 290kmh were expected where the eye came ashore (on the southern side of the eye would have been stronger, being onshore wind adn you add the 20kmh forward motion

Thanks for the update, Brian. Pretty much as reported in the media here this evening, so they were on target.
The swathe seems to have been quite narrow, huh?
Not like the blast we’d get here with the topography amplifying things if we were to have one of those monsters come knocking…

Thanks for the direction and tracking info weatheroz (glad its now down to a cat2)
Thoughts at the time I asked were on an Aussie family member in Cooktown but contact now established via the family telephone tree …
Rest up folks …

I was up most of the night following it on the weather radar. Ya never know with these things when they can change course, and being fairly close.

Not much happened here. All the activity was north of here. Max wind gust I measured was 53.1km/h at 08:00am and again at 09:03am. But that was just 2 big gusts. Rest of the time the wind was no where near that. Rain has been very light considering. 14.4mm for the entire event.

I haven’t been out at all today, but I don’t think there was any damage here. Maybe a couple of broken trees but that’s about it. Never lost power at all.

Luckly for people further up north on the beaches, the tides where neap with very little differance between low and high. That halped to keep the storm surge down a bit from what it could have been.

Outside at the moment there are actually a few stars breaking through.

Now we sit back and wait to see what will happen with Wati. :?

Obviously you were very lucky. It’s not a good thing to be hit by a cyclone - just ask the people from New Orleans!

TC Wati is a bit of a concern, I have heard predictions of it hitting Mackay, just down the road from here (200km)

Hello Brian,
We now have power, so i can run the air conditioner now.
Just a quick update on the weather instruments:
The lightning tracker was on a piece of ply ( to minimise shielding ) well that snapped in half, and the noise when the black box (antenna hitting the iron roof,) was very loud, i though my radio mast fell over !!!

The Ultimeter 2100 was OK, but one of its cups is a bit twisted, I’ve had problems with Ultimeter cups before (birds sitting on them and snapping) This is a bit of an issue with Peet bros, they may test the cups in a wind tunnel, but may not take into account flying debris (leafs etc)

The Davis Vantage Pro Plus, stood up pretty well, except it is at a temporary :frowning: location, the anemometer was on a aluminum pole, and it was bent when gusts reached 100 kmh.

Weather Display software:
Everything went OK. Power was lost at 0830, UPS clicked in which gave me about 30 minutes of run time, then i connected the Honda inverter generator, which kept all my systems going so Australia and the World can watch and listen (online scanner) Tropical Cyclone Larry cross within 50km to the south. The only thing i regret is i don’t have (affordable) broadband internet. Australia and the world wanted to know what was happening and LIVE as well, i could tell by the record number of hits to my website. During Cyclone Larry i was running 2 dial up internet connections, the main connection (weather display, Nexstorm and the online radio scanner) and a second connection in which a second scanner was connected so i could stream audio over the net. The second connection was also used to surf the web, as the main connection was too slow for surfing.

I don’t know what i would of done if i lost landline connection, maybe mobile phone and just upload the clientraw.txt, i think i put that as a feature request year or so ago, just in case one was to loose landline, Weather Display could turn off all uploads and downloads except for the clientraw text files. it a once in a Bluemoon situation.

In terms of damage, after looking at the Seven local news of Innisfail, i got away lightly.
There was some avocado dropping, but very ( in fact minimal) uprooted orchard trees.
Why is that in other years when storms pass through, some trees are uprooted, and yesterday it was minimal,
i think this is because of the recent DRY wet season, and the roots dug deeper to find water, this was a saving grace.

Overall it was a highlight of my (weather) life. Even though the action started at 7am, i did not sleep that night, the excitement overwhelming. So what i did was setup a two way radio link with a friend in Cairns, and we talked all night (sometimes stopped me from falling asleep at the desk), at midnight he gave me a call and said that he can see stars, i said there will be action, at 5am he said the winds have picked up a bit, and he was thinking it might be a fizzer. At the peak of the action, alot of swear words was sent over the radio 8O

I’ve got gif images from the webcam, and want to export to video, is that possible?

Brian, I’m sorry, but I tried to get you up here, i didn’t want to see you divorced. My wedding is in 2 months !! The possibility of you being stuck in Mareeba was very high, and you didn’t like the idea of being alone in Cairns.

Anyway ciao for now,
Cyclone

Hi
glad you are OK, and not as much damage as you thought :slight_smile:

in the end, the wife would have been supportive…butbeing on my own would not have been any fun
it sounded real bad in reports in the papers…people said it was the sound of the devil (screamming noise, like a jet aircraft), in Ininsfail!
looks like some smaller towns got wiped out pretty much… 8O 8O
Brian

Thanks for the report, cyclone. Glad you got through OK.

I bet you jumped when the lightning detector hit the roof! 8O

trees: I agree that the roots might go deeper in dry conditions, but dry ground is also a much better anchor than sodden soil - as we note with our landslides during storms and earthquakes here in NZ. Details of crop damage have come through - some growers have been badly hammered indeed.

Lots of food for thought in your description of how you kept the weather data flowing - will work through that at my leisure as there’s bound to be a few things that I need to consider for the future.

I wonder if that twisted cup is just a bitter cup … #-o

looks like we are going to Fly over TC Wati on the way back to NZ this morning! (which is heading towards NZ (in a transitional state, to give much needed rain ) :slight_smile:

We’ve had 57 mm of rain in the last 4 days and temperatures plunged to the low teens with a southerly gale.
Should’ve put out extra buckets for the hydro lakes and the vulcanologists at Raoul so that they can put the volcano out. :roll:

If Wati brings rain, let’s hope it lands on the southern hydro lakes.
Prediction yesterday was that it would track through central NZ sometime on Monday.

didnt see much…just lots of high cloud and cirrus cloid (which we were flying in at one stage)
100kmh tail wind made for a quick trip
very dry here still,in this area, rain will be very welcome! (which is forecasted to start from later tomorrow) :wink: