Hi all, and wow that was an intense cyclone, the small town of Yeppoon right on the coast got the brunt at Cat 5 and the eye of the cyclone fairly much connected the dots between Yeppon then Rockhampton at Cat 3 then Here also at Cat 3 it was a bit different for us here on the mountain near Mt Morgan town, by the time the cyclone got here the eye had distorted into a south to north oval and we experienced the full force of the wind just on the edge of the eyewall for the entire time with no real letup it just got stronger and stronger and at first the winds from the east were only brief before they turned and we got about 1.5 hours of gusts up to seemed like about 180 to 220 Kph then the last 20 minutes or so were very destructive winds must have been over 250 Kph.
Lots of damage, only just got mobile service from the main carrier Telstra. Will be no grid power for maybe a week or more here, no injuries or casualties at all in this cyclone but after the one in NT a child got an electrical burn, 1 injury. Not bad considering the destruction and flooding. I only found 1 injured bird which was a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, it's branch came down and it's head was flat on top and it was drenched and docile, but I wasn't sure if they naturally have a flat head or not so I put it in a cage and by morning it's feathers were all dry and it screamed at me while climbing the wire so I let it go and it flew off but hung around because it flock is away, seems fine.
I heard there was over 1000 spans of power lines down with trees on them across the entire destruction zone, and we are a small backwater place so we'll be low priority. Some people are falling to pieces because they must throwout their food and don't know what to do, "panicking", but I'll bet most of them have blown the cost of several generators over the past few years. Truckloads of generators are being sold like hotcakes. Even our generator suffered some kind of failure I think due to the horizontal rain. So we had to make do with a 2.2 KVA genny which we had to reclaim back from friends for a couple of days which is not wired up to the house so leads everywhere and didn't get it back till day after, I'm in an outbuilding so I'm just using battery lights and my Android Tablet with a TV dongle, I can watch TV for about 5 Watts. Because the grid tie solar array is out of service my small solar array charging batteries came in very handy first night with no power, the folks up at the house were chuffed when I took a battery and inverter up and turned on the telly for them to watch the news.
And to think they often make fun at me for my ways and insistence on having a bunch of big batteries always ready to use. A new 6 KVA genny was fired up today. So we're set again.
We have 35 000 liters of rain water, fresh eggs every day and animals to butcher if we need to but it won't come to that, we need them to keep the bush at bay.
I'll make up a short video of some of the more interesting footage I shot from my patio and side door during the early part of the cyclone, I didn't film the worst of it because it was just too dangerous, we got zero damage to buildings but next door is trashed and lost the roof. My TV antenna didn't even move on my Bunkhouse.
All my goat huts are all still in tact and without damage as well. The electric fence is a mess though. There is so much tree on the ground and it's so damn hot and humid the animals don't go anywhere, if they chose they could just walk away.
We are now Cat 3 cyclone rated at this residence we required no help, pity the infrastructure isn't, even too much rain ruins the show for power and phones.
Looks like the darn thing is heading back up north out to sea, it would not surprise me if it turned around and intensified again after getting some more warm water into it. Not sure when I'll be able to upload the footage everything is on and off and will be for some time.
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Topic: OUR, window on the world. (Read 310856 times)
