Rain

Some pictures of the water left by today's hour or two of heavy rain: back of house, side of house, drainage ditch (normally empty). Three men in suits inspected the flooding near us; they now have very wet shoes. Must be city folks; locals would go barefoot, as I did. We hope the suits now believe residents' claims of drainage problems. And this wasn't really bad rain: heavy but not many hours, so far. No water into houses but some unoccupied places are very close to getting flooded. We're still okay.

Dust storm

Dust from big storms in NSW and southern Qld was very noticeable as we took our 5PM walk, but it's not nearly as bad as we've seen in photos from southern areas.

Here's a satellite photo.

Major cyclone threat averted

On Saturday (7 March) we rushed home to beat the rain and bring everything in off the balconies so it couldn't blow around. The cyclone was expected to pass by offshore from Airlie Beach early Sunday morning, accompanied by destructive winds and heavy rain... a combination likely to flood or wash out some bits of the road between here and Townsville, and/or cut off the electricity, even if nothing worse happened. Fortunately, we had minimal impact in Airlie Beach; the wind direction was such that it hit the ranges to the east and south first, leaving us in a relatively protected zone. And the cyclone stayed just far enough offshore that we were outside the zone of the worst winds and rain.

On Sunday morning Eric went for a reconnaissance walk and said he saw no damage or flooding, though the beach is mostly underwater from the very high tide. Numerous shops (normally open on Sunday) were closed and battened down (tape on the windows, plywood over the door).

The first Queensland cyclone of the season

Tropical Cyclone Charlotte (and its precursor storm, and its post-cyclone phase) have been dumping lots of rain over tropical Queensland for the past several days, where it's caused floods and damaged roads. The rain is generally welcomed by locals, despite the inconveniences, though some relative newcomers to the region seem a bit shocked.

We're well south of the main storm system, but still getting a fair amount of wind and rain—enough, at least, to rattle the windows and keep us indoors. We've been keeping track of river heights through the Bureau of Meteorology's excellent website, and on Monday we spoke with the salesperson at Carlyle Gardens who said the rain was "bucketing down" there at the time.

Predictions are for an "active" cyclone season all along the Queensland coast this year, even as far south as Brisbane. The last really devastating cyclone to hit Airlie Beach was Ada, a Category 4 which came through the Whitsunday islands on 17 January 1970. At Airlie Beach, 80% of buildings were reported destroyed. The top floor of the Airlie Beach hotel was removed, and the Coral Sea Resort suffered extensive damage. On 1 March 1979, Cyclone Kerry passed the coast near Proserpine, with damage around the Whitsunday resort islands.

In Townsville, the last big cyclone was Althea, on 24 December, 1971. A smaller one, Keith, came past on 31 January, 1977 while I was living in Townsville. It crossed the coast at nearby Cape Cleveland. I recorded the wailing of the cyclone alert sirens and some of the radio announcements. The sound of the heavy rain on the metal roof was incredible.

Probably the best-known cyclone to hit Australia was Cyclone Tracy, the Christmas-eve storm that destroyed most of Darwin in 1974. A more recent well-known storm was Cyclone Larry, 20 March 2006, which caused severe damage to the town of Innisfail and pretty much destroyed the North Queensland banana crop for that season.

The Bureau of Meteorology explains tropical cyclones, and shows the storm tracks over Australia.

Rain, rain, more rain

The wet and windy weather returned overnight, after a few days of intermittent rain while the storm went south 150 km and caused major flooding in Mackay. Then the storm turned around and came back to us last night. Actually, there's been lots of rain all up the coast and all the usual roads are flooded (again), so the truck with the Saturday newspapers couldn't get through and AFAIK flights in and out of the airport were cancelled (perhaps because people couldn't get to or from the airport, or perhaps because the runway needed repair after water damage earlier in the week). The good news is the electricity has stayed on, except for one 45-minute outage a few days ago. Our backup power supply kept the internet connection working and of course the laptop kept going, so I just carried on working. The phrase "surfing the Internet" takes on a new meaning when the weather's like this. Down in Mackay, they're cleaning up the mess. People are warned to stay out of the floodwaters because of the danger of crocodiles.

More wild wet season weather

Heavy rain and wind overnight on the 12th tossed yachts onto the beach and the rocks, here in Airlie Beach and at several other places on the coast and in the islands. Eric didn't take the camera out into the rain when he went on a futile quest for the morning newspaper (the truck had been delayed by the weather), but he said he counted at least 14 yachts on shore, most of them looking decidedly the worse for wear -- and that's just in the 500 metres of our town. This picture is taken a bit further along the coast towards Cannonvale. The newspapers did get here later in the morning, but then the roads north and south were cut by floods, as is usual folllowing heavy rain; this includes the road to the airport. We're on high ground and doing fine. Haven't heard if more landslides have occurred in the area, or how many trees are down. So far the electricity has stayed on. We actually had surf on Wednesday morning! Only a few feet high (perhaps as much as two metres?), but that's pretty exciting given that our "surf" is normally only a few inches high. People were out on surfboards. Today (Thursday) Eric and I walked along the beach and photographed some of the damaged boats. An album with a selection of photos is here: http://avalook.com/airliebeach/airlie0802/

Rain continues

Heavy rain fell again overnight. In anticipation, the shops damaged yesterday were sandbagged against further flooding. (See photo.) Today we had some breaks in the weather, though the clouds remained and the rain returned in mid-afternoon. The Bruce Highway north and south of Proserpine reopened, but the road from here to the highway was still closed the last time I checked. Neither the mail nor the newspapers arrived in the morning; Eric hasn't gone out again to see if they came in later. Update: The roads are all apparently open, and I just phoned the newsagent who says the papers arrived around lunchtime. Now to brave the rain and go collect one!

Tsunami alert but no wave

Earlier today, Eric came in from collecting the mail and said, "Have you heard about the tsunami threat to the Queensland coast?" Me: "What? Is this an April Fool's joke?" (At that time it was still April 1 in Hawaii, where the warning came from.) Eric: "No, it was a genuine warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, because of an earthquake near the Solomon Islands, but no reports of significant sea level rises have been received, so no tsunami is now expected." We then looked it up on the web, which said "some rises of about 20-30 cm have been observed". So we kept an eye out for any sea level rises here, but we didn't notice anything (not that we expected to). A very small rise was recorded on the instruments at Sydney Harbour. According to the evening news, schools were closed on much of the east coast and lots of people headed for high ground, as a precaution, remembering the Indian Ocean tsunami. By the time we heard about it, the wave (had it existed) would have been on us. Fortunately our apartment is well up on a hill, so we'd probably not be washed away, but a true tsunami would wreck havoc on the town and the road out, and the power supply etc. At least our cyclone preparations (food, water, camping/cooking gear) would serve us well in such a situation! [Edit] In the Solomon Islands themselves, big waves (up to 10 metres?) did occur.