Reports are coming in that the BOM and ABC are spinning the Queensland cyclone. This is the thread for those comments. I’ll add more detail as the situation “clears”.
Off topic but I should like to send a word of concern to the folks in Queensland who appear about to be surprised by a storm that is currently MUCH stronger than it had originally been forecast to be. Marcia is currently at Category 4 on the scale the US uses and appears to be strengthening still. This storm, Marcia, had been forecast to make landfall as a marginal Category 2. This is an extremely dangerous storm. My thoughts will be with those in Queensland over the coming days.
It’ll pass west of me sometime around mid-day today. (and make landfall in half an hour at Yeppoon). It’s been consistant rain, but not heavey rain. So far so good.
May not help unless they were installed 2 centuries ago:
Fron BOM reported 20/02/2015 News.com
“The Bureau of Meteorology says it only has records of four Category 5 cyclones making landfall in Queensland: Cyclone Mahina in Princess Charlotte Bay in 1899, a cyclone in Mackay and another in Innisfail in 1918 (they didn’t have names) and Cyclone Yasi in 2011.”
Despite claims to the contrary, climate scientists say it is not possible say with any confidence whether there is a climate change signal in a single extreme event or even an extreme season.
“It is difficult to make a strong case that we are seeing a change in tropical cyclones,” Bureau of Meteorology climate specialist David Jones says.
“There is a strong physical basis for expecting cyclones to become stronger but it is challenging to see a particular trend in the data,” Jones says.
Most of the cyclone data used by climate scientists only dates back to the 1980s.
Prior to 1960 it was only really possible to measure cyclones opportunistically if they happened to pass over a boat or weather station.
From the late 70s to 80s the quality of data improved dramatically with the availability of very good satellite images.
Was it just me?
Have you ever seen more over the top emotive reporting on something as BIG storms go was actually a relative fizzer?
Every single reporter crossed to started his/hers observations with catostrophic or fierce wind or devasting flooding or monumental seas or some other over the top emotive discription.
I hate to “rain on their reports” but that usually happens in the wet/cyclone season up north
It seemed all of the stations were disapointed there was no serious injurys to report.
As the day wore on you could actually feel their collective enthusiasm was waning and that they were disapointed.
While I’m watching all these “live crosses” to evacuation centres I’m looking in the background.
Mums and dads smiling on their mobiles, all the lights on and the kids having an adventure of a lifetime.
It was truly cringe worthy.
Premier she is now. And on TV reading about the cyclone she looked utterly terrified. Not, I am sure, of the cyclone, but of the fact that she hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
Yes, and they will all be paid for by the profits of the evil power companies. Small problem, why would anyone invest in power companies if the socialists are going to confiscate your returns? Labor are good at this, it follows on the proposal to increase council rates on investment properties with the investor being prohibited from increasing rents. Communism by any other name.
Just waiting for the sandwich-board wearers (the usual suspects posing as objective scientists) to emerge from the woodwork claiming cyclones in cyclone season are unprecedented and extreme storms like Marcia have never happened before this far south and that in future we will get more of these and it’s all our fault and we need to impoverish our people with high energy costs and taxes, or hand over oodles of borrowed money to the UN via over-paid bureaucrats/technocrats to make it all stop.
Just want you all to know that I pipped the BOM to the post’
Gosh, it is so easy to be a climate scientist, say any old crap and suddenly it is fact. Hmm…crap…frap…frat…faat…fact…there, that’s climate science logic at its very best.
Peter Miller
February 17, 2015 at 10:14 pm · Reply
Talking of propaganda, I see there is a cyclone approaching Australia.
So I want to be first to say, “This cyclone is further proof of global warming.”
Your term “sandwich-board waters” is a good one. If these people didn’t have the infallible science label, people would just think of them as a doomsday cult and ignore them. Amazing what a little paint and relabeling can do!
If these people didn’t have the infallible science label, people would just think of them as a doomsday cult and ignore them.
Many a true word spoken in a throwaway comment.
Well done, Sheri.
Good morning all. Marcia heading straight for us, 83km north. A very compact system, very strong winds at eyewall, but Samuel Hill only 30km SE of the eyewall has winds of 59 kmh to 106 kmh gusts. Rocky Airport 32kmh to 44 kmh. Raining sideways. Hope it loses intensity quickly, will still be very strong if it goes straight over us (due about midday).
TC Marcia has now made landfall at Shoalwater Bay, near the Williamson Base.
That’s around 100KM (60 Miles) from where I sit.
Right now the wind has picked up and it’s raining heavily. Rained most of the night. That saying about the calm before the storm is eerily correct, because from around 6.30AM until around 8.30 it was almost totally still, with just the occasional gust of wind and a short shower.
The track has it heading straight at us here in Rockhampton, and while these things (typically) lose strength upon landfall, they still have it projected to be Cat3 when it reaches us here in Rockhampton at around Midday to 1 or 2 PM.
I have a screen copy of the radar image of the Cyclone making landfall, and this was taken at 8.34AM local time, so around 40 minutes ago.
The power is still on, and they tell us that if it goes off, we could be without it for two days. (a harbinger of a future reality)
Ken Stewart is (I think) around three kilometres from where I sit here now.
Hi Tony, you and Ken Stewart are about 100km north of us here. I was watching and noting pressure gradients and wind speed and directions all day, and I have to say I noticed the same things as you. The previous night as it approached Creal Reef it was certainly showing some very low pressures, but the post-landfall observations just didn’t seem to reflect expectations. Having said that though, it was certainly bad enough and there was more than enough damage and distress for people, this was no mere breeze, it was certainly a cyclone. The eye passed about 50km to the west of us reportedly as Cat 2, and appeared to track along the range, hence the flooding occurring on the western side around Biloela and the Kroombit. Collards and Callide Creeks.
I suspect that this cyclone was no worse than TC AIVU when it hit Ayr in 1989.
Townsville had a very serious cyclone prior to 1988 and the people there were terrified that it was their turn again. I heard several Townsville folk speaking about their experience in that previous cyclone. Then we had Aivu coming at us, and we thought that it would hit Townsville but it landed at Ayr instead. There was 1 casualty because the man would not leave his caravan. The damage was minimal and if I remember correctly Aivu was no more than a cat 3.
TC Marcia was definitely not category 4 when it hit land. It was not even close to Yazi or the cyclone that previously hit in the same region. Yepoon for example has experienced far worse damage than the damage caused by Marcia.
Jo, I’ve been watching a severe case of Wag the Dog, from BOM and ABC with regard to TC Lam. They built and amazing fiction out of very little then pretended it was and still is an epic event. An bit over an hour ago ABC were still claiming the NT’s Lam cyclone has up to 250 km/h winds as it moves in land.
No one else in the media and BOM noticed that almost none of it has been true or accurate, that it had nothing like that measured wind strength as it came ashore. The highest sustained wind, and highest wind gust from the inner core band of TC Lam last night, as the core’s inner storm band was directly impinging the eastern side of Milingimbi, as it came on shore:
Which is only 38.7 % of BOM forecast max wind gust speeds in the eye-wall, which mostly dissolved on radar as it came ashore.
So I’m currently watching the exact same thing occurring just down the coast from me, with TC Monica. 100% of the eye stepped on to land at 9:50 AM on radar. And the following is the logged wind data from the worst part of the southern core, from a site that just went through the inner wall, on the southern side. The wind sensor is still in the eastern inner eye wall so here’s the data as the pressure began to fall from ~1000. Brace yourself:
So the max sustained is about consistent with a weak Category-2 (Aust region) within the strongest part of the storm’s inner core
But the associated max gusts are at the top of Cat 2, and a couple fall just slightly inside category-3 range (anything over 165km/h). I might bring up that 200 km/h used to be the cat-3 gust boundary for most of my life, but these are modern ‘special’ cat-3s.
The storm wind was ~40 km/h stronger when near Percy Island at 4:30 AM.
20/04:30am 25.1 4.8 25.1 100 0.0 SW 141 208 76 112 975.7 974.2 –
Now go turn on ABC (sorry for recommending this) and it’s a traumatic Cat-5 horror-story! They are taking us all for mugs.
Thanks Ken & Unmentionable, I had a feeling this might be a beat-up.
You have motivated me to check, and of course keep the records before they disappear.
For others, its not hard, eg http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/observations/qldall.shtml?ref=hdr
BoM second line menu bar, choose State, then drill down, eg region, then station …
“issued every 30 minutes, with the page automatically refreshed every 10 minutes”
Generally seems to update within about 5 minutes, but won’t necessarily refresh automatically in your browser.
Some stations seem to throw in times in addition to hour/half hour.
It is interesting and perhaps indicative, that as far as I have been able to check, no anemometers or stations have broken or gone offline. During Yasi, Townsville Aero was off (switched off or broke) and I recall that Willis I. broke.
and of course keep the records before they disappear
I’m so glad someone is doing this. I’m bracing myself, and not for the low that’s about to hit Brisbane as this cyclone travels south. I’m bracing myself for the BS and the beat up.
Before going off-line Ken earlier raised questions around what the actual readings were versus what was being ‘reported’.
I thought it was a beat up before TC Marcia landed. It was a gut feeling that this cyclone was a weak one. Yazi was exceptional and there had been other cyclones that were cat 4. TC Marcia was about the same as TC Aivu.
Unmentionable, I appreciate that we need to be cautious, and I agree this cyclone may have been overhyped (some photos I’ve seen of damage at Byfield does not look at all consistent with Cat 5, especially the south-eastern quadrant..) but I don’t think you can use Samuel Hill to gauge that.
Look at the directional readings. It was reading SW’ly winds from early morning. Yet the cyclone passed DIRECTLY to its west. The winds should (and would) have backed to north or north-westerly, through east? I would put $$ on the station being compromised in some way, so I don’t think it’s a reliable gauge of actual wind speeds.
We can’t forget too that BoM technical reports always had the strongest winds at a very small radius, to the tune of 35km. They obviously dropped significantly outside that distance, which was a good thing. And it lost its puff very quickly once over land too, again, thankfully. Having said that, I would like to know what they saw to make it a Cat 5.
And for the record, Karoly etc are all out with the usual “climate change will make cyclones worse and come further south as warmer atmosphere can hold more water” etc etc. No mention of less temp differential between the poles and the equator potentially offsetting this. Nor that this is CQ’s first cyclonic impact since Fran in the early-mid 1990’s….
The rumour about who hyped what and why seems to depend on who you talk to.
So far I have not heard anyone from the BoM blame AGW for TC Marcia. I’ve seen one MSM article regurgitate the global warming meme (in the Silly) but that’s a journo passing along what the experts tell him.
It would seem it’s the government climate scientists (eg Karoly) who are blaming AGW for TC Marcia.
If anyone hyped up the category of TC Marcia it could only have been the BoM, not the MSM who only reported what they were told. But the BoM may have had either good reason to believe the strength would escalate, or they may have had a dodgy model which gave a high estimate. Deceptive hype is not the only possible explanation when plain old incompetence and chaos can explain it adequately.
Also, the BoM have not yet blamed AGW for the cyclone.
It’s been very much a tag team of hype, with each actor playing their small part.
Also, at the end of the day, there was still a trail of destruction despite it being only category 2.
I think I’d be somewhat less peeved by BOM if it had not massive moved the goal posts on the category boundaries of cyclones with its thoroughly ludicrous “Australian Region Scale”.
I will never accept the proposition that a system with no closed eye-wall and gross structural malformations and sustained winds of only 63 to 88 km/h can possibly be considered a ‘Tropical cyclone’.
It is not. It’s a tropical storm. What does BOM have against this excellent concept and term of a ‘tropical storm’ as the progenitor of cyclones? What failed genius at BOM thought that was a good idea?
In my view the US Saffir-Simpson scale is a vastly more credible and rational scale of assigning tropical storm or cyclone impact category and threat status, and rationally guiding civil understanding. BOM’s ad-hoc classification boundaries seem perverse, they generating needless confusion, they seem arbitrary, and are clearly very misleading.
The BOM tropical cyclone classification system is a stinker, a failure. If you ask the public where the boundaries are, and what they signify, they would have no clue at all – at all.
If we wanted to make a rational system that makes sense to everyday people in Australia it could not eb simpler.
TS = 60 to 90 km/hr Gusts
Cat-1 = 90 to 125 km/h Gusts
Cat-2 = 126 to 175 km/h Gusts
Cat-3 = 176 to 225 km/h Gusts
Cat-4 = 226 to 275 km/h Gusts
Cat-5 – 275 to 350 km/h Gusts
People would understand and relate much more easily to that sort of basic intensity scale.
The largest wind gust I saw was 156m./hr. at YEPOON about 1.30 PM; everything else was 50-60-70, so it was low Cat 2 when it made landfall and diminished from then; plenty of rain though.
since early evening yesterday, ABC local in Brisbane was talking to people up north, trying to whip everyone into a frenzy. “it’s raining” a caller would say. “wow” the abc presenter would respond. and so it went on, hour after hour.
since TC Marcia made landfall, i have monitored all tv coverage, listened to abc NQ, checked NQ press, and the worst i have seen as regards footage is some fairly wild seas and some trees which are barely moving.
in comments above, James Bradley quotes BOM re Cat 5 cyclones, with most recent being 1918. that would explain why all coverage i’ve heard has claimed it’s the worst cyclone in a hundred years. yet i cannot find a single result online making such a claim. everything i found online says worst “in 25 years”.
what is extraordinary is how little “live” coverage there has been. it’s all scary rhetoric from BOM, the Premier, etc, such as:
ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Situation ‘desperate’ as category five storm pummels Queensland coast
Updated 5 minutes ago
Severe Tropical Cyclone Marcia is set to bring “calamity” to Queensland as the category five storm crosses the coast bearing destructive wind gusts up to 285 kilometres per hour…
Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said a “desperate situation” was unfolding, and emergency service workers would themselves be forced to take cover soon.
“This is going to be a calamity, there is absolutely no doubt about that – our primary focus from this point on is the safety of all human life in that area,” he said…
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said severe damage was expected and lives were at risk.
“Over the next few hours, many thousands of Queenslanders are about to go through a harrowing and terrifying experience,” she said.
“I want those people to know that we are with you every step of the way – we will be standing by your side – this a severe cyclone.”…
Ms Palaszczuk said there were reports that people were still driving around on the roads in Yeppoon and surrounding coastal areas…
“Can I please stress to everyone do not go outdoors – stay inside your homes, that is the safest place to be during this time,” she said, adding that the noise of the cyclone “will be extreme”…
Further south, Bundaberg Mayor Mal Forman said authorities were taking advantage of relatively calm weather to doorknock residents… http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-20/tropical-cyclone-marcia-category-five-looms-off-queensland-coast/6153166
overseas:
‘Destructive’ tropical cyclone Marcia hits Queensland
BBC News-23 minutes ago
It (BOM) said “destructive winds” would threaten communities between St Lawrence and Gladstone in the morning, and Capricornia and Burnett districts later in the day.
Local residents should be prepared for an evacuation if advised by the authorities, the BoM added. It also warned about possible tidal and flash flooding…
Australia’s northeast coast braces for category five cyclone
Deutsche Welle – 1 hour ago
Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters the most important thing was people were safe. “Over the next 24 hours, Queenslanders are about to go through a harrowing and terrifying experience..Police Commissioner Ian Stewart, who called it a “desperate situation.” …
as for TC Lam:
ABC: Tropical Cyclone Lam: Storm crosses mainland coast as category four; Ramingining battered
Updated 20 Feb 2015, 9:56am
Lam hammered the small community of Ramingining but appeared not to have caused any fatalities or major damage to homes…
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Adam Morgan said the storm would weaken during Friday but was still expected to be cyclonic until at least 7:00pm and possibly be a category one cyclone overnight into Saturday.
He said people should not be tempted to emerge from cyclone shelters while in the eye of the storm.
“It is only a small cyclone, a very small eye, so that time won’t be long until the winds pick up again,” he said…
Ms Golsby-Smith said when Ramingining was in the eye of the cyclone, people emerged from their homes to survey the damage.
Despite downed trees and powerlines, it appeared little damage had been done to buildings…
Before mobile phone communications off Elcho Island failed, residents reported wind tearing trees from the root and throwing them 100 metres.
They also reported some houses had lost their roofs.The strong winds also caused weather equipment to fail on Elcho Island and Millingimbi, making it harder to estimate the full strength of winds…
ABC reporter Steven Schubert, who was in the Indigenous community of Maningrida when the cyclone crossed the coast about 160km away, said the town appeared to have escaped the worst.
He reported that there was minimal damage, although a power line was down…
The BoM said there had been storm surges associated with the cyclone of about one metre in Nhulunbuy but the cyclone crossed the coast between high tides, making the storm surges less severe than they may have otherwise been.
On Thursday, hundreds of people from the Aboriginal community of Warruwi were evacuated to Darwin on helicopters and planes… http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-20/tropical-cyclone-lam-crosses-mainland-coast/6153902
“i have monitored all tv coverage, listened to abc NQ, checked NQ press, and the worst i have seen as regards footage is some fairly wild seas and some trees which are barely moving.”
—
There is a cyclone, a small localized Cat-2 moving fast south. Other than that its pure hype Pat,
It’s been really doing my head in watching the data, then listening the melodramatic vastly inaccurate almost entirely imaginary and speculative garbage on ABC-24.
Pat, the data is right there, one or two clicks away! But is the BOM getting on tele to clarify?
Heck no, they just ‘downgraded’ it to Cat-4! … gotta play this sucker out …
So there’s nothing accidental about this farce, BOM knows perfectly well it’s not a Cat 5, nor a Cat 4, and not even a Cat-3! There was just one logged wind speed of 170 km/h, that just falls into the lower range of a very weak cat-3 gust (Aust region), whilst it was making landfall. It’s down to 140 to 150 km/h max now.
LIke is said, doing my head in that this is what it has come to.
I agree Pat.
I have sat out a couple of bad ones.
Vehicles were chained together to stop them being blown by the wind.
There is no way in the world that anyone would have stood outside with a microphone or a camera.
All windows were steel mesh protected (not taped).
Cyclone Trixie (Dampier 1975) is the strongest I know of. The only vegetation left standing were ghost gums and spinifex grass. All other vegetation was removed from the saturated ground by the wind.
I have close relatives in Rocky. They said Cyclone Marcia was not pleasant, but not as bad as the media portrayed.
I hope Tony and Ken are OK when their power is reconnected. It was a good day for wind turbines; not so good for solar.
If those wind turbines were as “soundly” constructed as some in the UK then they would have been removed from the saturated ground by the wind, or more likely blown flat.
I’ve been through the same with cars cabled down and wind blown grit abrading paint off rocker panels. Bark stripped from the trees was also common place.
The tell-tale sign is that a Cat 4 and Cat 5 will leave no leaves, and often not one branch on any tree within the core’s path, and almost no tree trunks either. If that level of total vegetation obliteration isn’t widespread in the path of the eye, then it was certainly not a Cat 4 or Cat 5. If it was a Cat 4 hitting Yepoon or Rocky there won’t be a leaf left on any tree in either of those places.
News.com.au are winding up their disaster storm rhetroic in Brisbane, even suggesting a repeat of the Brisbane floods of 2011.
Of course they were devastating as the Wivinhoe dam was full to an illegal, dangerous and near fatal 190%, thanks to advice that it would never rain again from climate experts like Tim Flannery. An earthworks dam will collapse if it overflows, dropping 3 Sydney harbours into the Brisbane valley and destroying Brisane. Wivenhoe was built to prevent such floods, not create one. Thanks to our wonderful ‘scientists’, a million people could have drowned. It was down to hours to empty the dam faster than the rain was falling. Now we are being told it was natural, an extreme event. It wasn’t. It was criminal negligence.
For those who are wondering how any dam can be 190% full, the risk with an earthenwork dam is so great, it is given a 100% margin of error. It is full when it is half full. In semitropical areas, you can fill a dam in a night with a 200-300mm rainfall. There were even laws passed that the dam should never get to this height, but the administrators and engineers were told it would never happen. We were in an endless drought and “even the rains which fall will not fill the dams” (Tim Flannery).
Of course there was an inquiry. We should have had politicians and Greenies facing jail sentences, but they blamed the engineers. The massive damage was nothing compared to what nearly happened. It would have been the worst civilian tragedy since the tsunami hit Lisbon, which was at least a purely natural event with no one to blame. The prophets of doom nearly made it happen. Now they are claiming it was a natural disaster.
‘Storms such as the category 5 Cyclone Marcia, which crossed the central Queensland coast on Friday, “are going to become more common in the future along the eastern seaboard of Australia,” Professor Turton from James Cook University told Fairfax Media.’
Turton is suggesting that cyclones will travel further south to NSW in a AGW world, but that is just theoretical nonsense.
Going back over the past hundred years, there appears to be no correlation, the LIA was just coming to a close in the southern hemisphere during the 1890s.
I guess the development of the tropical north will have to be abandoned, even though there are less and lower category cyclones at this time. That will change, of course, sans anything humans do. Just read the harrowing accounts from the last 40 years of the 1800s. Now who’s policies would the abandoning of northern development be consistent with? Professor @ JCU? Alas BOM thought-police weren’t keen on an inconvenient history, so re-wrote the bits that were glaringly ‘wrong’.
It’s a simple “trick” used by all global warmist body’s around the world when reality doesn’t fit the models.
Or the data just flatly refuses to fit the narrative.
It’s called shifting the goalposts.
Unmentionable gives it a better clarity than I can here.
#2.3.1.1
If temperatures flatly refuse to give you heatwaves, then simply lower the criteria that designates what “is” a heatwave.
Same goes with cyclones.
If wind speeds flatly refuse to cooperate by giving you more and bigger cyclones.
Then lower the speeds that designates what “is” a cyclone and what is a tropical storm.
Like the hottest year that never was.
They begrudgingly corrected it but not till they gave the propoganda a good flogging first.
They’ll do exactly the same here.
Anyone who makes such claims is totally dumb.
The wet season is cyclone season. There is nothing unusual about having cyclones at this time of year. Every other year there has been at least 3 cyclones that hit the northern part of Australia.
How is it that these people do not understand that cyclone season is a natural phenomenon? I am not a scientist yet I know that there is a cyclone season. These cyclones will continue to happen, and most of them will be no more than a cat 2.
Yes, I have experienced a cyclone. I never imagined that I would ever experience something like that, but it happened when I was living in Townsville. It is a fact of life.
Well said, TdeF. There was not only no one on watch, there was no one at home and when they got to work on Monday morning and saw where the water levels were they soiled themselves and dumped it all over Brisbane.
Talk about using the Palace Guard to kill the King!
But to get back to Jo’s thread, Marcia [Marseeuh] was a pussycat. And as Ken says, there was no way it was a Cat5.
It’s amazing how they can say it has windspeeds of ~ 290kmh and a BP of ~ 930 but when it gets to the first AWS like Samuel Hill, waddya know, it’s suddenly 170kmh and 976 BP.
TdeF, with all due respect, Wivanhoe is not an earth dam. It does however have a number of earthern spillways (put in well after the dam’s construction) which are designed to wash out if overtopped, to prevent overtopping of the main dam wall if inflow is exceeding the capacity of the gates to let it out, and at full capacity. You’re correct though that the usual “100% capacity” is the drinking water storage capacity of the dam, which is actually only 50% of the dam’s true ‘full’ capacity. That other 50% is for the purposes of flood mitigation, as Wivanhoe was constructed as a dual purpose, water supply / flood mitigation structure.
The engineers were not holding water due to ‘global warming’. On that fateful few days, the BoM forecast was for the extremely heavy rain to move south and east, from over the dam to over Brisbane and beyond. The forecast falls over the dam and catchments would not have filled Wivanhoe to capacity, and there were very real fears that any dam releases would coincide with a local-rainfall-induced high river level, and actually cause flooding in the lower Brisbane River. So the engineers held back. Problem was, the system stalled over the catchment and the dam itself, resulting in massive, FAST dam level rises. I have heard unconfirmed reports that the first earthern spillway was around 30cm from overtopping, which would have released a virtual wall of water towards the city. The system stalled over the dam instead of moving southeast – so the rainfall in the city didn’t eventuate, but the dam engineers were forced to release very very quickly as a result.
I agree that water could have been released from the dam earlier, with this event on the horizon. That’s probably what you’re referring to I guess. But there was still sufficient dam capacity to ‘take’ the event, just a little less room for error (which is unfortunately what happened). And my position is that the engineers had very little case to answer – hindsight is always 20/20 and I’m certain if they knew the rainfall was to stay over the dam, they would have released. But they only had the forecasts to work from, and those forecasts said the system was tracking towards Brisbane, so earlier releases were a very bad idea. I really feel for them.
LittleDavey83 … likewise with all due respect, where do you get your information from? If what you say is the case then there’d be no basis for the class action currently being brought against the State Government for its alleged negligence. The ‘engineers’ did not make an early release of water when they should have done so because they did not want to flood some ‘bridges’ in low lying rural and semi-rural downstream land, that’s in the Report. In addition, whilst they don’t admit to it, it is apparent that they did not want to discharge the excess storage due to their uncertainty of future water supply influenced by the drought, the rantings of Flannery et al. and, the economic value of the resource that they had stored.
You don’t mention the near destruction of Toowoomba … which is independent of the Wivenhoe catchment.
Brisbane received a significant amount of heavy rain at the time.
Streetcred – I don’t believe there IS a basis for the class action. I get my information from being in Brisbane at the time, and being a long-time weather buff. I studied this system, I was watching it in real time, and I was in the Weatherzone group raising the alarm about the Lockyer Valley well before BoM (I will never forget the chill going down my spine when I saw how those rivers were spiking). I have spent a lot of time on post-incident analysis of this event (though it was some time ago now). I’ve read the report in its entirety, tho again, some time ago. I also have civil engineering qualifications so have the capacity to understand technical information and reports.
I agree that keeping the low-lying crossings open as long as possible contributed, there were a number of contributing factors. I also agree that more water was being kept in the leadup than “should” have been, but I don’t agree it was a significant factor. The main factor was the forecast situation differed greatly from the actual situation. I don’t have the pre-event forecasts saved on this computer, but I would guess you should be able to find them online through BoM’s flood event report. I was watching this closely because I lived in a potential Logan River flood area at the time, and worked on the Gold Coast for a govt department which is heavily involved in disaster response.
What actually happened was a very good result for me personally as the Logan R didn’t rise as anticipated, and the Gold Coast was practically spared compared to what ‘could’ have happened. The rain stayed north, and intensified very quickly, that was not what was forecast. The dam had sufficient capacity to hold the forecast rainfall, but the situation which occurred was vastly different.
Toowoomba is a different situation, and mostly flows to the west, not to Brisbane. I’ve seen the hydrological reports about Toowoomba’s flooding and it was largely a development and urbanisation problem. The Lockyer and Bremer do flow into the Brisbane River – another reason the engineers were holding water back, as those rivers do NOT have flood mitigation structures. If the forecast came off, and the rain moved below Wivanhoe, all that water would have fallen into the river catchments anyway – if they were releasing water on top of that, the flood would without a doubt have been even worse than what it was.
In summary – agreed they were holding more than they ‘should’ have been, but they could only rely on the forecasts they had at the time. They were fine for the forecast situation, but the rain did not move south as forecast and so created an issue that was difficult to deal with. It’s hard to fault the engineers involved (though I don’t agree with everything) – and I think the class action is an absolute beat up and completely unwarranted. Another case of people wanting someone else to bail them out from their mistakes (not everyone mind you, I’m well aware that some people were legitimately caught by surprise in areas which had never flooded. But many others took the risk and lost, now want others to foot the bill).
And agreed scaper – if the fuse plugs went, it would have been a disaster which would completely pale the event which DID occur.
It was not criminal negligence at all. Wivenhoe was reasonably well managed through that flood. The only fault that I saw was that for about 4 hours the authorities, stunned by the previous day’s Lockyer and Toowoomba flooding, failed to notice that next morning it was again raining at 2 inches an hour for 4 hours across much of the Wivenhoe catchment.
As for the beat-up. Channel 7 devoted their whole morning show to coverage of the cyclone. Maybe also Channel 9, and I don’t know if others also.
It was laughable to see a reporter broadcasting from St Lawrence, which had been forecast to be in or near the eye of the cyclone, in a bit of a breeze, as the cyclone failed to keep its rendezvous, slowing and changing its direction to the east.
Whatever Channel 7’s intention had been, their commitment to this cyclone forced them to fill the allotted time. With the forecast turning out to be less than precise this led to an awful lot of repetition which made even good information eventually seem like BS.
The lesson there is that modern technology has so far reduced the cost of spreading around that this has become possible. Not just with this cyclone but the whole AGW thing generally. In earlier times scientists mounted expeditions so that The National Geographic could show us first photos and later the odd movie of glaciers in Tierra del Fuego or Greenland calving into the ocean. Now cruise ships sail to these places, carrying people with cheap and marvellously effective digital cameras and video cameras.
Even pseudo scientists can persuade universities to contribute to landing them on Antarctica, where they can cause their ship to get stuck in the ice, depriving real scientists of the resources needed to carry out their programs.
So far as I know, for the Burrendong Dam on the Macquarie River, 100% is spillway level. Burrendong has floodgates which are I think about 6 metres high, which can hold water to that height above spillway level.
Sometimes Burrendong holds water to above 100%. I remember that from memory in the winter of about 1990 after a wet period it went to 137% full. Over a few weeks of water releases this dropped to 117%, whereupon the early morning local news announced record flooding in Bathurst, upstream from the dam.
The dam that day went to 175% full. However because of the increasing surface area, this was only 6 m above spillway level, which astonished me. The flood downstream in Dubbo was 2 metres lower than it would have been without the dam.
What you have to remember is that Climate “Scientists” are running around in ever decreasing circles looking for the missing heat, rising oceans, etc. so their measurements of the rotational wind speed have to be adjusted by subtracting their gyrations.
The BOM, the MSM and the ABC are certainly taking a huge pasting over at the Weatherzone Forum [ Severe Tropical Cyclone Marcia (Coral Sea) February 2015 – GENERAL DISCUSSION. pages 94 > ] for a gross over the top extremist catastrophe type hyping, “hyperbole overload” was the description, of both the strength and the dangers of what, going by the reports of those close to the action and experienced in cyclone impacts, is a barely decent cyclone following landfall.
Thank you for making a dedicated thread and moving those Jo, a few hours sleep later.
The BOM downgraded it to tropical low at about 5 PM.
But their spokesman is on ABC TV right now 5:20 EST and is still calling it a cyclone, indeed he just called it a Cat-2 again. Then went on to added that they hope to downgrade it to a tropical low tomorrow morning!
Unmentionable –
just saw your comment. thanx for the response.
TVNZ is a government-owned national broadcaster, but is 90%commercially funded, with the board appointed by the Minister of Broadcasting (according to Wikipedia). at time of posting this, this is how the Live blog begins, & the ***opening line is showing up on google news:
20 Feb: TVNewZealand: ‘Cyclone Sandwich’ as Marcia and Lam warnings intensify in Australia
***6.08pm: Tropical Cyclone Marcia has wreaked havoc on a big weekend of sport planned in south-east Queensland.
Already, tonight’s A-League clash between Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory has been called off.
At the biggest risk is Australia’s World Cup match against Bangladesh on Saturday at the Gabba, which appears destined to be washed out.
???5.50pm: The arrival of Marcia and Lam on Australian shores is the first time since satellite records began that two severe cyclones have crossed the coast so close together… http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/cyclone-sandwich-marcia-and-lam-warnings-intensify-in-australia-6238819
wreaked havoc on the sporting schedule! u gotta love it.
check the 27 pics of DEVASTATION – do not miss any, they load fast.
also check the pic further down of the intact awnings on the GIDDY GOAT cafe
ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Central Queensland towns devastated as storm tracks across state
Updated 20 Feb 2015, 5:29pm
Two staff members of the Yeppoon Hotel had to be rescued from an elevator when power was cut.
Fay Brewer and Vikki Smith were stuck for about half an hour before several men used a car jack to wedge open the doors.
Yeppoon resident Peter Lowe felt the top storey of his house shake as cyclone Marcia approached.
He bunkered down with his wife and two daughters playing monopoly… http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-20/cyclone-marcia-damage-across-central-queensland/6163626
el gordo forgot to give the link to Hannam/SMH, which also includes the following plus…
Cyclone Marcia: Climate change is expanding the tropics
Kevin Walsh, a cyclone expert at the University of Melbourne agreed that Cyclone Marcia was an abnormal storm.
“It’s pretty unusual for a category 5 cyclone to strike the coast of Queensland this far south,” Associate Professor Walsh said…
The Bureau of Meteorology said the near-simultaneous landing of Cyclone Lam on the Northern Territory coast and Cyclone Marcia is the first recorded instance of twin severe cyclone events.
Professor David Karoly, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, said the prospect of fewer – but more intense – cyclones in the western Pacific basin under global warming is because of expected changes to atmospheric circulation.
The expansion of the tropics would likely result in a strengthening of the high-pressure belt over southern Australia, leading to reductions in rainfall, Professor Karoly said…. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cyclone-marcia-climate-change-is-expanding-the-tropics-20150220-13kdfi.html
Take note Percy Island was logging data after the main part of the core had passed but that station is now offline. I kept a copy and here’s the worst of it, if you didn’t see it:
That is consistent with a Cat-3 (Australian region that is)
The upper category boundary definition for Cat-3 sustained winds is 159 km/h, but Marcia’s highest measured sustained winds were 156 km/h.
The upper category boundary definition for Cat-3 wind Gusts is 224 km/h, but Marcia’s highest measured wind gust was 208 km/h.
__
The earlier (yesterday evening) Creal reef data was a close pass with the eye wall but the sensor did not interact directly with the inner core band, but remained outside of it by maybe 5 km NW or so. But it did pass through the outer and mid core banding.
This also was consistent with measurement of mid-strength Cat-3 under Australian region classification. So as far as the data is concerned the storm reached Cat 3 over water, and then was in a weakening phase towards a Cat-2 as it came ashore as a high Cat-2, with a single Cat-3 level gust of 170 km/h.
I’m glad TC Marcia wasn’t as strong as predicted, I know CAGW alarmists reading this will be confused but it’s ok to care for the wellbeing of others, I’m sure there’ll be other natural disasters to wet the bed over.
This is reminiscent of cyclone Nancyboy Melbourne 1985 that bothered a few alfresco diners and mussed up some perms, awful just awful…
The biggest difference in the weather is this: 40 years ago, most of Australia would be ignorant of this storm unless they themselves were under it. Today sitting in Scotland I can probably watch it live.
If you are an alarmophile and you want to want to get your kicks from watching weather porn …
These little ones can be very nasty in a small area.
Ada that took out the Whitsundays in 70 was small. It was destroying Airlie, while the sun was shining in Bowen.
It was not only the ABC, all the TV stations were at it. I guess they have to play it up after they send crews to cover the things.
I don’t want to disparage the losses many have suffered, but from what I’ve seen of the damage at Yeppoon, this thing was a kitten compared to ADA. After it the arrears near the strong parts of her had not a single leaf left on any plant. Buildings were not damaged, but obliterated.
It is not just this one, it is the same every time.
At least this one they got close to right with the timing. Some might be interested in my account, for another sight, of one they got very wrong.
It was 1985 or 6, & I was running the marine division for South Mole Island in the Whitsundays. It was stores day, when our 90Ft barge loaded fuel, our freezer truck & our major order of stores for the week.
We had been watching a cyclone out in the Coral Sea for a few days, but at 5.00 AM the forecast was it would not affect us in the next 48 hours. The island powerhouse was getting low on diesel so at 6.00 AM I confirmed with the MacKay fuel supplier to send 15,000 gallons of diesel, 5,000 of petrol, & 1,000 of two stroke mix up on the tanker.
I sent the two large boats 29 & 24 meter International catamarans, off to our cyclone bolt hole on the mainland, & arranged for their families to go to a large high safe home that night. I kept the 60Ft island ferry out, as the resort requested 3 departures at 8.00 AM, midday & 4.00 PM for any guests who wanted off the island. It would take its chances at Shute harbor, as would the barge, after getting the supplies to the island.
9 AM the ferry is back, & the barge is at the jetty, pumping diesel ashore, & unloading stores. The wind is up, & it’s getting a bit rough at the jetty. The bureau correct their forecast, we have only 24 hours before the cyclone reaches us.
10 AM it is getting quite rough at the jetty, I tell the island the last ferry will leave at 11.00AM, confirm the power house has enough fuel, & send the barge off for Shute harbor. It’s square bow is not good for pushing into the growing seas.
11.00 AM I get on the ferry, with the departing island guests, & head for Shute harbor. The weather bureau corrects its forecast, the cyclone will be over us at 7.00 PM. I arrange our courtesy bus to pick up the big boats crews families & get them to the safe house, before meeting the ferry at Shute.
We hear a call from Whitsunday Rent a Yacht. 2 of their 35 footers are to the west of North Molle Island & in trouble. They cannot make headway in the rising seas. Can anyone help?
I don’t like this. Amateur sailors, with ropes, near propellers in rough conditions is asking for disaster, but what can you do. We are the only boat near, & just a couple of miles away. The 2 amateur skippers are very competent luckily, & we have them both in tow in just 45 minutes.
That’s when we get a call from the barge, it is losing power on the starboard engine, & can’t make headway towards Shute in the now moderate seaway. I can’t help him with these yachts out back, so tell the skipper to head to Airlie Beach, it’s mostly down wind, & out of the rough stuff. He is to shove the thing up into the mangroves, drop all the anchor gear, & get home. His family were not taken to the safe house, as he should have been home.
1.00 PM we finally get into Shute Harbor after a fair battle with increasing seas. As we do, the whole bay starts smoking. Spray is rising up from the water, first at the far end of the harbor, coming to meet us as we get near the jetty. This indicates about 70 knots of wind usually, but it only lasts for a couple of minutes, & diminishes.
We get the yachts as close to their facility as possible, & get them to drop their tow. The company has their own staff to help now.
We get our thing tied up about 2.30 PM, & head for Airlie Beach, to look after our own families. Strangely it is not that bad at Airlie. In fact by 4.00 PM it is a quite nice afternoon. That smoking water was the switch to north west wind as the eye passed not too far south of us.
It is fortunate the folk of the weather bureau were many miles away from the Whitsundays. If I could have got to them just then, I might have done something very nasty to them, with the sharp end of a pineapple.
How they expect to be takes seriously with their predictions I really don’t know. Talking about 100 years, when they can’t even get a few hours right, even with the satellites, is really too much.
Hasbeen, I preferred that story when you used British spelling instead of American.
😉
It’s great the satellites got a mention this time, but the satellites were useful for getting wind speed and track direction well before the cyclone passed within coo-ee of any ground station. As an early warning they are very useful for that purpose. Just as you have pointed out, the problem here is in the models not the satellites. Call it chaos, call it insufficient data, call it dud physics – whatever the reason, the end result was they didn’t predict it would weaken so much by landfall.
BOM Queensland @BOM_Qld 10:19 PM – 18 Feb 2015
#CycloneMarcia currently Category 3 predicted to intensify to Category 4 by landfall.
From the station data Unmentionable shows, it was barely a cat 3 at landfall, only cat 2 based on sustained speed.
Either the BoM’s models were unreliable and actually predicted a cat 4, or else the model was very reliable and the BoM put an artificial safety margin on top of the computer prediction. None of us know the truth there. I suspect it’s just the chaos of weather as there was 26 hours between that prediction and landfall. (Twitter timestamps are shown in UTC if you are not logged in.)
I think it is a very different proposition to predict an annual world average temperature in 100 years than something very specific like the peak speed of a particular cyclone in exactly 26 hours. Methods that are appropriate for one task are not appropriate for the other. The sources of uncertainty are very different phenomena in the two cases. So even if you could do it, the ability to predict world annual climate would not imply the ability to predict a weather event so exactly.
Waah waah waah – more BoM bashing. Perhaps we should rely on Hasbeen with salty anecdotes and his sea-faring barometer instead of satellites and modelling.
Anyway the Qld election was a referendum on nasty right wingers and even nastier sceptics (as we know mostly a few over zealous ex-greens who have lapsed into silliness and angry males over 55) – the answer was well … predictable.
Waah waah waah
But disappointed I can over to read the whingey anti-analysis and it isn’t even up yet.
But clearly and unambiguously an exceptional event predicted by greenhouse theory – fewer stronger systems and southern impact zones … come on guys – sample size of one – let’s see if we can sook to 400 comments. Lucky that the new Qld Govt is reinstating the full Office of Climate Change, heaps of solar and wind turbines galore, banning coal – but maybe that’s just a rumour.
Said with all the uncanny wit and wisdom of a follower of the “love media”. One day, when you grow up, you’ll be glad you left that anonymously. – Jo
Still raining. Cat thorougly pissed off. She stepped outside for a sniff of fresh air. Decided immediately that fresh air was far too wet, and came back in.
That max sustained wind level is about 15 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
That max gust wind level is about 5 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
—
Watching a Milingimbi video report on ABC24 Zombie. That recording site went through the eye-wall winds of TC LAM from about 11:00 PM to 1 AM last night. The vegetation showed typical damage consistent with a Cat-1 (seen it many times before, very familiar with it). There was zero indication of high wind speed damage. I saw zip in the report of any structural damage at all, from a claimed Cat-4! The reporter clearly has no idea what a Cat-4’s damage would even look like so no relevant questions were asked.
“Don’t send a reporter with a clue about cyclones: – CHECK!”
Strongest sustained wind on the continuous log was 54 km/h
Strongest eye-wall gust coming ashore on a continuous log is 89 km/h
Perspective on this terrifying Category-4 TC Lam:
That max sustained wind level is about 9 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
That max gust wind level is about 2 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
Thus: TC LAM’s EYE WALL WAS NOT EVEN AT CAT-1 STRENGTH AT LANDFALL – NOT EVEN A CYCLONE!
________________________ “May the Farce be with you”
Hi everyone
I am not an expert but the devastation by cyclone Tracy, called a 4 and the contrast to other more recent cyclones has me scratching my head. It does not make sense. Cyclone Tracy amongst other devastation reduced a foreshore stone building to rubble, twisted power poles eliminated vegetation. So have they changed the criteria?
I was on the first civilian plane into Darwin after Tracy (on January 1). I was sent up by my company to help with the aftermath (I was with Rentokil and rats, mosquitoes and 20,000 six day-old chicks that would not feed from stalled feeders had to be dealt with.)
I can still see street after street with nothing left standing. The telegraph poles, made from two railway lines welded to cross pieces were all flattered or at crazy angles. If any trees were left standing they were only trunks with stumps of branches left; there was not a leaf in sight. That was a Cat 4. Looks like Marcia was nothing like it.
I have a memory of standing in a line for food supplies. The guy ahead of me was wearing a hard hat with the message “Warning – Contents under pressure”.
During the hyperventilating MSM TC Marcia coverage drivel I notice this journalistic gem from Todays Lisa Wilkinson on twitter “Some perspective on Category 5 Cyclone Marcia about to hit QLD at 9am – Cyclone Tracy which flattened Darwin in 1974 was only a Category 4.”
Only a category 4 eh Lisa? well those Territorians were so lucky I guess, it’s would appear her husbands special brand of stupid has certainly rubbed off over the years, what an insensitive twit.
I first saw this while watching TC Ita which made landfall north of Cairns a year ago. It made a direct hit on a BOM anemometer which I was monitoring. The windspeed registered bore no semblance to those being quoted. The meter “broke” registering 200 KPH which is low C 3. It was being presented as a killer cyclone – 4 or 5.
The only conclusion I could come to was that because the number of cyclones is low, the BOM needs to be able to say: “But the severity is much higher than it used to be. GW is real.”
I saw the eye of Marcia break up on radar between 1 and 2 PM today. The weather will continue bad, gusty and wet as long as the low pressure persists but it should be called ex TC Marcia. At the time the BOM tracking map said there was a C 3 storm directly over Rockhampton [around 2 pm] videos were being posted of relieved citizens in the streets.
my guess… they homogenise. 😉
if this issue of Marcia, and how it was determined to be a Cat 5 is pursued – which I intend to do – we will probably end up with yet another method of ‘homogenisation’, this one based on satellite info.
Jennifer go for it. Please keep pursuing the BOM over the way in which the categorized TC Marcia.
TC Marcia was no worse than Aivu which touched down in Ayr in 1989.
Rockhampton has suffered worse damage in the past and ditto for Yepoon.
There is no way that we are experiencing more cyclones in cyclone season and there is no way that these cyclones are any stronger than cyclones we have had in the past.
All of the Hurricanes, Typhoons and Tropical Storms of the last year or two have been completely overhyped with regards to Wind Speeds compared to what actually hits land.
It is almost as if they are reading MPH for KPH, or they are using Satellite data for speeds at the Top of the storms.
I absolutely agree, Unmentionable – James Cook Uni’s damage investigation reports after Larry and Yasi are very good reading. I’m very much looking forward to their synopsis of Marcia..
This is frightening, in part because the news/weather media are willing to possibly exaggerate or lie and in part when people see the damage done, they will think the damage is what one should expect from a Cat 5 cyclone. If in the future a Cat 5 hits, this could be a very deadly belief.
Kirra Point was shortened a few years ago, but, recently had been replaced back to original size to bring back the ‘old’ Kirra.
It worked. Kirra, hollow and fast. And you stand very close to watch.
Coolangatta -Tweed is the original Gold Coast.
It uniquely faces north and so is well-positioned to handle the cyclone-north swells.
And, Snapper Rocks is the point where east coast resumes its north-south.
Here you find the east facing Duranbah Beach, for the south and east swells that don’t curve around into Snapper.
It is a beautiful spot. A surfer’s paradise that produces world champs.
don’t know how my SMH piece below got posted before i finished it.
the caption for what is now pic 22 of 36 at ABC’s “Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Central Queensland towns devastated as storm tracks across state” posted earlier is:
“A surfer battles winds at Yeppoon as Tropical Cyclone Marcia begins to cross the coast. SBS World News: Stefan Armbruster.”
the VERY SAME PIC is now in a joyful Fairfax surfing story, with the caption:
“A surfer in Yeppoon on Friday morning. Photo: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News”.
(***BOM makes an incongruous, & predictably gloomy, appearance in the piece, however.)
20 Feb: SMH: Luke Malpass: Surfers make most of Cyclone Marcia
PHOTO CAPTION: A surfer in Yeppoon on Friday morning. Photo: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News
One brave soul was caught on camera surfing at Yeppoon, as it bore the brunt of Cyclone Marcia.
Further south, Gold Coast surfers made the most of king tides combined with a substantial eastern swell…
“It’s amazing,” Dan Bird said after putting his board away on Friday afternoon. “Today’s the best it’s been in a while, the wind is really good.”
***In NSW, the waves are tending towards dangerous, prompting a warning from the Bureau of Meteorology for seas north of the Hunter…
“[The waves] probably weren’t as big as everyone thought they were going to be … but still four-foot [1.2-metre] range.
“It’s not massive but still pretty solid,” she said.
The cyclone came at the right time for Veri Freitas, who is originally from Brazil and had friends arriving in town on Friday for the Quiksilver Pro, the first pro surfing tournament in Australia for 2015.
“All my friends are in town, we are doing a lot of airport runs,” she said, “It’s going to be a very, very big week.”… http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/surfers-make-most-of-cyclone-marcia-20150220-13koh0.html
i had lunch at the Rainbow Bay Surf Club last Wednesday, while the Roxy Pro structures were being erected, and everyone was excitedly hoping TC Marcia would help create perfect surfing conditions for the competition.
nice pic of the surf in the SMH link, now that Fairfax has moved on from the scary cyclone stories to spruiking for the Roxy Pro!
Hey Pat.
Both is ok, as Quicksilver is the men’s sponsor, and Roxy is the women’s sponsor.
FWIW, work on the surf pro structures have stopped, as Cyclone Marcia has moved all the sand from the super bank, where the Surf Pro was held.
The sand bank formed as part of the tweed river mouth clearance and sand reclamation program.
They are of the opinion that the super bank will not form in time for the Surf Pro.
It seems that the ‘original’ super bank, that went from the Kirra point groyne to north Kirra, has re-formed since the re-lenghtening of the Kirra groyne, and with a good ole fashioned cyclone event, so scarce …Ye ole days are back!
I put this at WUWT (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/19/cyclone-marcia-climate-crank-wishing-suffering-on-deniers/)
Eric, have not read all the comments above but Marcia was not a gigantic cyclone, just a small one a bit further south than the normal cyclones on the north east coast of Queensland and, a bit sad for the owners, damaged some poorly designed and built houses. However, stronger a more severe cyclones have occurred in the past and even further south eg the Mooloolah event which hit the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane in 1893. While all the fuss was on about Marcia, the completely separate rain depression on the South East Coast from the Tweed in NSW upto the Sunshine Coast was overlooked. This dumped lots of rain (upto 300mm from 9AM to 3PM at Caboolture Qld}on top of previous heavy falls the previous day causing local flooding (cars under water to their roof etc). It has been raining all day and now weather people expect upto 300mm tomorrow on the Gold Coast, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast from the remnants of Marcia combining with the rain depression.
The Bureau of Met (BOM) are useless at forecasting. All they can think of is the models based on increasing levels of that awful (but necessary for plant life) gas CO2 which causes droughts, floods, snow, melting ice, more rain, higher temperatures, freezing conditions, blizzards etc
(PS was on the road this afternoon through the pouring rain and just managed to get passed the area where there was water over the Bruce Hwy at Caboolture and they closed the road for a short time.)
It is interesting that now cyclones and tornados and other severe weather is hyped everywhere. In the late 70’s, a tornado hit the town I was living in. I watched the funnel come down, we drove around and looked at the damage. Yet there was a complete reluctance on the part of the weather persons to actually call this a tornado. The “official” designation was thunderstorm with high winds, I believe. Back then, towns considered being hit by tornados a bad thing. Today, I’m sure it would be at least an F2 or F3, even if it wasn’t. Times change.
Also, I am curious if straight-line 100 mph (160 kph) are less damaging than cyclones or tornados. It’s not uncommon for parts of Wyoming to have 100 mph wind gusts and very high sustained wind speeds. I suppose everything that cannot withstand such wind has already blown away. There’s rarely heavy rain with the straight-line wind, but it does happen.
” I am curious if straight-line 100 mph (160 kph) are less damaging than cyclones or tornados”
Cyclones often contain vortices of localised higher intensity winds, also rapid high-low-high fluctuations that cause fatigue like bending a fork until it breaks. Post-cyclone inspections throw up oddities, such as one where a fully rated 2 storey building was trashed, while 100m down the road was a shack, held together with coat-hanger wire and bailing twine, completely undamaged.
Kind of like tornados that bend trees over but don’t break the tree, drive straw into trees and other weird things.
I found this “People living in mobile homes are especially at risk from injury and death. Even anchored mobile homes can be seriously damaged when winds gust over 80 mph.” on the National Severe Storms Labratory page. I have not seen an anchored trailer blow over, but unanchored ones and tractor-trailer rigs also blow over routinely. I think it is the difference in the types of damage seen that helps differentiate between straightline and tornado winds.
when living in Ohio a mini tornado touched down. My son was at school and they had a “drill”. I was driving to the medical section at Wright Patterson Air Force base when the tornado touched down. The damage was one tree that had been uprooted.
A few years previously there was a devastating tornado that touched down in Xenia. As a result of the devastation, Fairborn was well prepared for anything that might happen.
Once again, there is a tornado season and the mid-west gets severely hit. On the other hand it was a surprise to me to learn that tornados also hit Conneticut and when I visited Hartford I learned all about the tornado that had hit that city.
Even Australia has tornados. I have Sydney friends who have actually seen those tornados and there is a small portion of Castle Hill that is known as tornado alley. When I lived there, I do remember the times that there were strong winds, and trees were uprooted in a particular street that was close to where we lived.
So far there has been nothing unusual about the tornadoes in the USA, but I am wondering about the prevalence of tornadoes in Australia.
The storm evolution is shown in the table below.
Advisory Alert color Date (UTC) Category Wind speed
by cyclone winds (>120km/h) Location (lon, lat)
1
green
2/18/2015 Tropical storm 64 km/h (40 mph) km/h ( mph)
2
green
2/18/2015 12:00:00 PM Tropical storm 74 km/h (46 mph) km/h ( mph)
3
green
2/19/2015 Tropical storm 93 km/h (58 mph) km/h ( mph)
4
green
2/19/2015 6:00:00 AM Category 2 167 km/h (104 mph) km/h ( mph)
5
green
2/19/2015 6:00:00 PM Category 3 204 km/h (127 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/20/2015 6:00:00 AM Category 1 138 km/h (86 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/20/2015 6:00:00 PM Tropical storm 101 km/h (63 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/21/2015 6:00:00 AM Tropical storm 64 km/h (40 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/21/2015 6:00:00 PM Tropical depression 56 km/h (35 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/22/2015 6:00:00 AM Tropical depression 56 km/h (35 mph) km/h ( mph)
This article from the SMH suggests cyclones will move further south in the future.
Pity they don’t read their own archives as this article is about 61 years late. Northern NSW was subject to records floods in 1954 because of cyclone activity.
This is from the Herald in 1954:
The Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday 23 February 1954
Herald” Appeal
To Aid
Flood Victims
“The Sydney Morning Herald to-day launches a public appeal for funds to aid the victims of the floods.
Already it is known that at least 22persons have lost their lives on the north coast.
Reports of what has happened in the worst-hit centres-Lismore, Casino, Kyogle, and Murwillumbah – are scanty, but it is certain that there has been great devastation.
Several thousand people at least have lost their homes. Human distress is deep and widespread.
Total losses may be even higher than those in the calamitous floods of 1949 and 1950.
In response to an appeal by the “Herald” in1950, the people of N.S.W. gave £116,549/9/10.
Leading Sydney citizens yesterday commended the 1954 “Herald” appeal to the public.
The Lord Mayor, Alderman P. D. Hills, said last night:
“I commend this appeal to the people of Sydney and ask that they remember these people in distress
“The needs of the far north coast must be desperate and urgent.
“Many of these poor people were congratulating themselves a week or 10 days ago when rain fell during the Queen’s visit and broke the prolonged drought.
“Now they have gone from one terrible extreme to another disaster.
“I hope the people of Sydney will support this appeal.”
Sir Charles Lloyd Tones summed up the response of others:
“The fund is something I believe every citizen should support.”
Subscribers should send their donations, made payable to “‘Sydney Morning Herald’ Public Appeals Fund,” to the fund, Box 4969, G.P.O., Sydney.
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It seems climate change is occurring, it is changing back to what it used to be as floods in February/March were a common event then. I know I lived through them.
Demonstrates a very poor understanding of the environment by an environment reporter. The Tropic Zone is defined by the geometry of the tropic lines, which are set by the angle of the Earth’s rotational axis to the plane of the ecliptic.
Hannah is suggesting the tilt of that axis is steadily increasing such that between 750 and 1500 years from the present the entire planet will be tropical.
1 February 1893 This tropical cyclone crossed the coast near Yeppoon, smashing buildings and uprooting trees. The barometer dropped to 969 hPa when the tropical cyclone passed over the Buninyong which was seeking shelter near the Northumberland Island Group. The 225 ton steamer Dickey was wrecked on Dickey Beach Caloundra. The tropical cyclone moved south with Crohamhurst (on Stanley River) recording 907 mm of rain in 24 hours to 9 am on the 3rd Feb. A 15.2 m high wall of water was observed roaring down a Stanley River gorge. More than 150 houses were washed down the Brisbane River. Indooroopilly Railway Bridge and the Victoria Bridge were both washed away. Flood height reached 9.25 m on Port Office Gauge. 7 men drowned in an Ipswich Colliery. 4 children drowned on the 3rd and a policeman drowned in a rescue attempt. On the 4th a man drowned after rescuing his father at South Brisbane. On the 6th a man was found drowned at O’Connell Terrace, a boy drowned at Petrie Terrace, a man was drowned at Rosalie and 2 men were drowned when a punt capsized at West End. On the 7th 2 men were found drowned at the Valley and Bowen Bridge and 3 men were lost when a boat capsized in the Brisbane River. At Maryborough 2 men were drowned and a family missing, believed drowned while trying to cross the river. Unprecedented flooding occurred at Maryborough where the Mary River Bridge washed away. The river peaked at Maryborough at 4 pm on the 5th with more than one hundred and 130 families homeless after their homes were swept away. Numerous houses were also washed away at Gympie leaving a large number of families homeless. There were other deaths in outlying areas.
Yes,I mentioned the 1893 cyclone in my comment 32 above. Thanks for the extended explanation.
BOM seem to ignore their own recorded history.
Let us hope that a repeat of the Federation drought holds off for a while to allow more building of dams and the demise of CO2 alarmism.
20 February 1954 This tropical cyclone crossed the coast at Coolangatta with a recorded pressure reading of 973 hPa. Some reports from the Coolangatta/Tweed Heads area had pressure readings to 962 hPa. The worst damage in that area occurred around Cudgen in New South Wales where some houses were blown apart and trees more than 1 m in diameter were twisted out of the ground. A record pressure reading of 982.7 hPa was recorded at Brisbane. Widespread structural damage occurred along the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and around Brisbane. A 0.64 m storm surge was recorded on the Moreton Bay tide gauge, however conditions were much worse on the foreshore with boats in the tree tops at Beachmere. Waves at Kirra brought 2 m of water onto the highway, picking up cars. 900 mm of rain was recorded at Springbrook in the 24 hour period up to landfall. Floods, combined with storm surge on the Nerang River caused the evacuation of several families and a dramatic rescue of people from Macintosh Island. The floods and cyclone then hit the Lismore district, with gales whipping up large waves on the then 11.3 km wide Richmond River. 26 people tragically died from these unprecedented effects.
Hi Jo,
Is it possible for one of your contributors or a group of them with meteorological quals to write an article referencing these numbers. It could be titled “The BOM Who Cried Wolf.” It is not just a matter of overhyping; the real risk lies in the attitudes of people who face a REAL Cat 5 cyclone at some future date.
Cyclone Marcia was a CAT 2, 70km wide and people were surfing and swimming in the ocean
YASI was a CAT 4-5 over 600 km wide and caused billions of $ damage
Marcia was tiny and the monsoons brought and are still bringing most of the rain
ALL our CAT 5 cyclones flattened everything in their path, including Darwin, they also damage the Barrier Reef while greenies are asleep
It’s not the overall size of the storm but the pressure gradient which determines how bad a cyclone is. Small ones are often more vicious. Having said that, I agree Marcia was ridiculously overhyped.
Thanks, SR, I have so many reports on the centre pressure, from 922hp and a bit less to 1004hp for the same time.
Most of the speeds in the media, 180k/h, 280p/h, and over 300 k/h were all estimations and not readings from an official gauge. It was all over hyped, as, bigger than YASI which was the biggest I had ever seen in Qld, how absurd, YASI was a monster, yet still ½ the size of the world record Typhoon TIP. http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-198.96,-30.43,2996
As you can see here, the Monsoons are bringing most of the rain just as they did in the 2011 Brisbane ‘dam’ flood
I have been checking out some of the images of damage. The roller doors don’t count, as any that are a few years old can be expected to come to bits in a moderate blow. There’s a new Australian Standard for these (a bit overdue …)
There are one or two severely damaged structures that don’t show any sign of having had cyclone rods, steel strapping, nail plates, or bracing walls. There are roof frames stripped of sheeting, and what’s left shows no sign of having had diagonal bracing. Looks like some places are overdue for an audit. Hopefully, there will be a damage report by ABCB and JCU CTS (or similar), including “windicator” studies eg failed and non-failed road signs, to (very accurately) supplement available anemometer data.
The foolish hyping by BoM and the media creates a real risk.
My solution (when I get the chance) is to get people to read JCU CTS Technical Study 51 (Larry) and 57 (Yasi). Even if they don’t read them, looking at the images helps a bit.
Some years ago I was involved with the Happy Bay resort on Long Island, in the Whitsundays.
At one stage we were demolishing a few old weatherboard guest cabins, & a couple of shower blocks & laundries. These were 25 to 35 years old, no where near as old as many homes along the waterfront in many places like Yeppoon.
The nails were so wasted in the air gap between the weatherboards & the frame, it was totally impossible to pull any out. They simply snapped at even mild application of pressure with a claw hammer.
We discussed being pleased the new bar was cement block construction, as we doubted any of the old guest units could stand even a mild cyclone, by the look of those nails.
It appeared to us it was only really memory that was holding many of those cabins together. Many Queensland coastal communities have old weekenders which were less well built than those units still in use as housing. Little wonder they blow apart.
Wind gusts of a Cat 2 will also damage frail infrastructure and fall some trees. I see no reason to believe Marcia was a Cat 5, nor Cat 4. Marcia did not have the howling wind of a Cat 4 nor Cat 5. People do not go surfing during the crossing of a Cat 5. Cat 5’s normally flatten everything in their path as they did in Darwin and Nth Qld
Cyclone Tracey that flattened Darwin on Christmas 1974 was a Cat 4 – max gusts of 240km/h. It was also small in size – like Marcia. The radius of destructive winds was only 50km. There have been many more powerful storms cross Australia’s shores but they usually miss highly populated areas. But Tracey’s eye passed right over Darwin’s CBD – a direct hit. Also most Darwin houses in 1974 were built on stilts to aid cooling in the tropical climate. Unfortunately it was this type of construction that is most vulnerable to strong winds and explains the near complete destruction of the city. After Cyclone Tracey building standards were changed. So a similar event today would not create the same level of damage.
But I hate to think what the MSM hype would be if a Tracey type storm struck Darwin again.
thanx for the info. i oops-ed re Quicksilver simply to match Malpass’s reference to it in the article, for those not familiar with surfing comps. Roxy/Stephanie Gilmore
were naturally of greater interest in the Surf Club last Wednesday.
not surprised by your other info, as the sand bank was being discussed, as was the possibility of moving to kirra pt. the big structure in front of the surf club seemed ridiculous anyway, given the weather systems about the place, plus it blocked the view from the club, which wasn’t going down well with patrons.
cementafriend says –
“While all the fuss was on about Marcia, the completely separate rain depression on the South East Coast from the Tweed in NSW upto the Sunshine Coast was overlooked”
true, because the MSM keeps referring to TC Marcia in relation to the tropical low depression affecting the Sunshine Coast, etc.
hope someone here can outline the different systems in a clear manner.
If the bommies (bureau commies) where doing what they are paid to do (and the Abbott government is too scared to force them to do) rather than pursuing an ideological agenda, they might consider conducting research into why it is that cyclones will (in some seasons) not track inland to areas that are subject to drought. Just look at Marcia’s track. It appears to have moved directly down the trough that runs through Queensland. I recall that during the height of the global warming el nino drought there were very few cyclones. One of the few that did form, a very weak one, started life off the east coast of Far North Queensland, from where it tracked across the cape and, astoundingly, across the gulf and into Arnhem Land, where it dissipated. I cannot recall a cyclone having following that path before.
You would suppose that a (low pressure) cyclone would be drawn to a high pressure areas, so, naturally, they will tend to track south. So I guess it makes sense that a cyclone would not be drawn towards central Australia, where it is hot and dry and the air pressure is therefore at its lowest. This would seem to suggest that a drought can be broken only by a la nina or some major weather event in the Indian Ocean that travels right across the continent.
I was in Darwin days after Tracy, Innisfail days after Larry and have inspected damage following other Cyclones and severe storms throughout Australia. One report yesterday suggested that winds exceeded 300kph when the TC reached Yeppoon. Every pole would have been flattened. There was actually a lack of such damage after Yasi which suggests that although heavy rains caused considerable heartache the winds never reached velocities suggested. The media and BOM really need to report facts in regard to possible natural disasters as we are generally under the impression that exaggeration is the present norm.
If we has 1/10th the mainstream media in this country the reporting would probably become ten times as good as it is, and about that more accurate. At the moment the idea of mass media ‘competition’ from many ‘sources’, to better service the ‘public interest’, is delivered in the form of who can formulate and push-out the biggest most fabulous BS story from their bowels to the most people in the shortest time.
Accuracy and truth? … pphhhhhahhahahahaaa! … … wrong universe.
21 Feb: Sunshine Coast Daily: Coast’s dams are brimming thanks to heavy rainfall
FOUR of the Sunshine Coast’s seven major dams were overflowing this morning, well ahead of the worst of the downpours expected from Cyclone Marcia.
Borumba, Ewen Maddock, Lake McDonald and Wappa dams had exceeded capacity, the over-spill adding to downstream flooding.
SEQWater reported that all of the flood storage capacity of Somerset and Wivenhoe dams behind Brisbane was still available.
Wivenhoe had 100% of its 1,967,000 megalitre flood storage available and Somerset 99% of its 721,000ML.
On the Sunshine Coast, Baroon Pocket Dam in the Blackall Ranges was holding 41,310 megalitres or 67.7% of capacity, Borumba 46,240ML (100.6%), Cooloolabin, in the north, 7526 ML (54.4%), Landsborough’s Ewen Maddock 18,983ML (114.4%), Noosa’s Lake Macdonald 8534ML (106.4%), Poona 615ML (94%) and Wappa Dam 5353ML (114%).
We have been getting calls, emails and text messages from down south and from friends overseas asking how we are coping, are we safe, do we still have power and do we have enough drinking water and canned food to get us over the worst. Can I just get the message out there to all our friends and relatives that we will be OK. We survived the last Labor Government and expect to survive this one too.
Graham Creed (ABC weatherman) thought the two cyclones hitting the continent was in tandem is ‘unusual’. The inference being that the waters are warming, producing more severe cyclones, although he didn’t actually state it.
Note the origin of cyclone Lam, (and cyclone Marcia.) The volcanically active Indonesian Archipelago.
Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ Alex S. Gaddes 1990. pp 73 – 78
“Deep Low Pressure Systems
“It is also known (see Ref. No 14a) that the stratosphere superimposes the above reactions on the troposphere (the ‘trickle down’ effect,) so that those volcano-induced stratospheric vortices turn into Tropospheric deep low pressure systems which I suspect to be the genesis of the rather frequent, rain-bearing cloud masses, which have been feeding in from the north-west over the past year.
No Accident
“I’m of the opinion that it will be shown to be not just an accident, that the weatherman’s ‘upper atmospheric disturbance’ happens to be associated with a rain-bearing depression, or ‘deep low pressure system’ and that frequently, the cause might well turn out to be an exploding volcano.”
I have already mentioned Galunggung and its effect on our weather in 1983. It is significant that Galunggung is one of the nine volcanoes listed on the maps, that are still active.
I am convinced that funds ought to be channeled into the study of the sudden outbreak of explosive volcanism in the Indonesian Archipelago and its potential to influence the weather in Eastern Australia. There is no doubt in my mind that, had such a program been established, the recent flood disaster could have been averted…….”
so it was “data compiled by the Space Science and Engineering Centre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US” that decided TC Marcia was a Cat 5 cyclone!
20 Feb: SMH: Peter Hannam: Cyclone Marcia: How storm took forecasters by surprise
VIDEO 2 mins Cyclone Marcia: the science behind storm
Extreme natural events expert Prof. Jonathan Nott (Geoscience expert at James Cook Uni) explains what is normal and what is unusual about the ferocious weather lashing Australia’s north east.
Cyclone Marcia is one super storm that caught Bureau of Meteorology forecasters by surprise.
Up until about mid-afternoon on Thursday, meteorologists were watching the storm tracking at category 1 strength, with sustained winds of just over 100km/h.
Then, about 4pm, forecasters watched as the cyclone started to slow and its projected intensity soared.
According to data compiled by the Space Science and Engineering Centre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, the projected wind speed for Marcia jumped to as much as 230km/h, well into the category 5 range.
The bureau estimates the storm crossed the coast at category 5 strength on Friday morning…
Kevin Walsh, a tropical cyclone expert at the University of Melbourne, said it was a slowdown in Marcia’s march towards the coastline that triggered the rise in intensity…
In Marcia’s case, favourable upper air conditions allowed the storm to speed up its rotation, drawing up more air “like smoke rising in a smokestack”, one meteorologist said…
Rob Webb, regional director of the bureau in Queensland, said the rate of Marcia’s strengthening was “remarkable” but added “it’s too early to pinpoint exactly why”…
Sea-surface temperatures off eastern Australia have been unusually warm, particularly off the NSW coast, with temperatures as much 2-3 degrees above average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Such rapid jumps in intensity have been observed elsewhere, such as in the north-west Pacific, Professor Walsh said. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/cyclone-marcia-how-storm-took-forecasters-by-surprise-20150220-13k57v.html
21 Feb: ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Gympie businesses begin to flood with water from Mary River
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk visited central Queensland to inspect the damage from ex-cyclone Marcia.
She met Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow on Saturday afternoon and spoke to emergency service workers at the disaster coordination centre.
Ms Palaszczuk promised to send the Army to help communities to rebuild.
***”What we are seeing here is complete and utter devastation – it has been absolutely horrific what these people have gone through,” she said.
“If you look at the devastation, people have lost roofs, they’ve lost possessions, but they haven’t lost their hope.”…
it took til the final line for ABC to include the Premier’s line about being lucky & fortunate with no serious injuries – but no apology for her wrong & unwarranted prediction Queenslanders would face a “harrowing and terrifying” ordeal. alright, she’s still clinging to “harrowing”.
instead of any criticism over the wrong prediction, tho, the MSM found a human interest story they could claim went viral (is there anything they love more?):
Cyclone Marcia: Social media makes a star of ‘The Sign Guy’
Brisbane Times – 10 hours ago
The Premier’s sign language expert Mark Cave…
Why a ‘poetic’ sign language interpreter went viral in Australia
BBC News – 20 hours ago
An Australian sign language interpreter has become a Twitter sensation…
#SignGuy steals the show as he delivers an animated storm warning
Yahoo News – 19 hours ago
Cyclone Marcia ‘Sign Guy’ reveals what it’s like to be an interpreter
Courier Mail – 6 hours ago
Through his work, the Sign Guy was able to interpret Barack Obama’s UQ Speech at the G20 last year, which he said was a really good experience…
meanwhile, all MSM reports of rain in SE Qld are still being directly or indirectly connected to Marcia.
” News reports are coming in that two tankers have collided in the English Channel. One ship was believed to be carrying a cargo of blue paint, the other red.
First reports say that all the sailors aboard both vessels have been marooned “
Reposting my comment on WUWT:
Never mind what Turton said. Here are the people I trust to get it right: https://www.jcu.edu.au/cts/
The url for the Rapid Assessment Report (PDF) is a bit big so here’s a TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/lpjt6sm
You won’t find much in the way of full-on contradiction as these people need to watch their backs, but on page 13 it says “The winds recorded during Marcia were below the design wind speed”.
Excellent work. Talk about rapid response. Why listen to drivel from so-called climate scientists when there are engineers like these around?
Another quote:
“A community that receives an over-represented wind speed report may have potential for complacency in preparation or building standards in the future.”
Part of my job Sheri …
“why not go another 150mm higher? The steel posts won’t cost any more” (flood risk)
or
“Don’t risk it – go the next level up. It’s only about $200 extra in plates and bolts.” (cyclone risk)
Trouble is, half-witted comment by climate alarmists makes the problem more difficult, because people end up thinking there is no point.
Hey guys, has the BOM redefined cyclone categories? Cat 5 cyclones used to flatten everything – literally. We were evacuated as kids and with good reason. Cyclone Marcia was just like any of a dozen storms over Queensland this summer. Actually there was an afternoon storm in late January that very easily trumped the severity of this cyclone.
Tom (Ayr born and bred)
this is key data, as resolution of the actual temperature record through 1880-1910 will be able to determine if the BOM’s secret temperature adjustment programs are grounded in science, or just green politics.
On the basis the BOM contains committed radical greens right up to high levels, and that these people are prepared to lie and breach rules ‘for the cause’, then it is likely that any relevant records held in BOM archives, where they probably should be, have been erased or disappeared. I am convinced the only way this can be resolved in the face of such committed fanatics is by several persistent FOI requests. Anything else will be batted away.
couple of callers commented on how far south this cyclone went and how that made it UNUSUAL.
does anyone know how far south it did affect? friends/family on the Sunshine Coast didn’t think it had affected them as late as saturday am, as their drenching came from the tropical low.
then there was a caller from Melbourne, who told the host TC Marcia had affected Melbourne, not in the part he was, but in another part which received 18 mls of rain saturday!
another caller, from South Africa, on a different topic. ends by mentioning he has a daughter on the Gold Coast. the host gets excited. if she’s on the Gold Coast, she’s just been through the most torrential rain ever.
the caller says: i spoke to her Saturday & she said it was all a bit ordinary. that shut the host up.
BTW LISTENING TO BBC WORLD SERVICE THE PAST COUPLE OF NIGHTS, I WAS SURPRISED THEY DID NOT HAVE A SINGLE MENTION OF TC MARCIA ON THEIR NEWS BULLETINS. NOW THAT IS UNUSUAL.
there is no doubt MSM were all over the Qld Coast, desperate to get sensational footage/pics of utter devastation, and i don’t want to hear excuses that it was so ferocious they had to take shelter. as with so many previous weather events, here’s a French reporter recently:
“grazed” in the two articles below seems more like an excuse for why no Cat 5 landed anywhere but the sparsely populated Shoalwater Bay, owned by the Australian Defence Force. In 2005 the federal government entered into a long-term agreement with the US over the use of Shoalwater Bay for military training purposes (Wikipedia). given Uni of Wisconsin-Madison in the US declared Marcia a Cat 5, who knows what it actually was when it made landfall there? very convenient.
21 Feb: The Australian: Cyclone Marcia, Cyclone Lam hit Queensland, NT: live updates
The gale-force winds and torrential rain ensured it was terrifying but in the end many were counting their lucky stars Marcia crossed the coast at the largely uninhabited Shoalwater Bay before gradually losing intensity.
“It’s just a big plot of land essentially with not much there,” Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Jess Carey told AAP.
Marcia was a category four storm when it “grazed” Yeppoon on Friday morning but was downgraded to category three about 1pm as it hit Rockhampton… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/cyclone-marcia-cyclone-lam-hit-queensland-nt-live-updates/story-e6frg6nf-1227227798977
today’s Gold Coast Bulletin story – “Cyclone Marcia: Gold Coast to cop a drenching as Marcia moves into south east Queensland” – begins with:
UPDATE: EX-tropical cyclone Marcia has moved out to sea, sparing the Gold Coast from predicted heavy rainfall:
21 Feb: Channel 9: ‘Destructive winds’ set to batter Gold Coast as former cyclone Marcia moves south
Gold Coast residents are bracing for severe thunderstorms and destructive winds as the fallout from ex-tropical Cyclone Marcia continues…
Yeppoon did not feel the full force of the system, then a category 5, as the storm only “grazed” the town, Ms Palaszczuk said…
***The Insurance Council of Australia has now declared the cyclone a “catastrophe” meaning all cyclone-related claims will be expedited… http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/02/19/12/40/tropical-cyclone-marcia-upgraded-to-category-two-as-queensland-braces-for-wild-weather
it’s been fine all day, with five minutes of fine drizzle mid-morning, where i am, halfway between brisbane and gold coast, and i don’t think it’s rained in brisbane either. surely Marcia didn’t affect SW Qld. can anyone provide date to show it did?
22 Feb: Brisbane Times: Cyclone Marcia: Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk backs Bureau of Meteorology after Marcia surprise
by Cameron Atfield, Brisbane Times and Sun-Herald journalist
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended the Bureau of Meteorolgy’s forecasting after the rapid escalation of Tropical Cyclone Marcia caught most by surprise.
***TC Marcia had been forecast to be a Category 1 or 2 as it approached the Queensland coast but quickly gained power and was a Category 5 – the most powerful classification – when it crossed the coast near Shoalwater Bay…
“This is something that they have never seen before as well, going from a low pressure system to a (Category) 1 all the way up to a 5,” she said in Yeppoon on Saturday afternoon.
“They’d never seen this in their lifetime, so this was a rare event.
“Now, they’re going to go back and look through all the research and try to work out how that happened so quickly…
***Localised flooding was reported across south-east Queensland, but Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the city was fortunate to have missed out on the forecast 120km/h winds… http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cyclone-marcia-premier-annastacia-palaszczuk-backs-bureau-of-meteorology-after-marcia-surprise-20150221-13l730.html
Uni of Wisconsin-Madison: Space Science & Engineering Centre – About Us
(scroll down) Associated Organizations
(LINK)National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NOAA Satellite & Information Service, NESDIS) http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/overview/
20 Feb: Eureka Alert: NASA-JAXA’s TRMM satellite sees rapid intensification of category-5 Marcia
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
At 11 p.m. local time (1324 UTC) on Feb. 19, 2015, the Precipitation Radar on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite observed the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Maria in the Coral Sea. At that time, Marcia was rapidly intensifying to category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, a little more than 12 hours before an expected landfall in Queensland, Australia.
The TRMM satellite is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency…
In this case, the heavy precipitation (the red volume of the image) near the ocean surface is the powerful base of a hot tower in the southwest quadrant of the eyewall.
A “hot tower” is a rain cloud that reaches at least to the top of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. It extends approximately nine miles (14.5 km) high in the tropics. These towers are called “hot” because they rise to such altitude due to the large amount of latent heat. Water vapor releases this latent heat as it condenses into liquid. NASA research found that a tropical cyclone with a hot tower in its eyewall was twice as likely to intensify within the next six hours, than a cyclone that lacked a tower… http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/nsfc-nts022015.php
So what was the final outcome? All those on this site with experience of Cat 4 or Cat 5 cyclones (me included, re Tracy) say that the damage, what little there was, would indicate that this was not a Cat 5. This seems to be supported by the recorded wind speeds detailed in previous posts (12, 22 and 23).
The media seem to have gone awfully quiet on it today, so it seems to be a non event. Does anybody know what the highest RECORDED (not estimated) wind speed was?
PeterPetrum – see BoM’s Observations page here.
Readings below are continuous wind speed / gust speed = BoM Cyclone Category. Wind speeds in kilometres per hour, stations listed in rough order from north to south.
Creal Reef: data doesn’t go back far enough, highest still in the table is 91 / 109 = Cat 2 (sustained) or below cyclone strength (gusts).
Middle Percy Island: 156 / 200 = Solid Cat 3 Williamson: 61 / 96 = below cyclone strength
Samuel Hill: 98 / 170 = Cat 2 (sustained winds) or Cat 3 (gusts) [showed SW-NW winds for the duration, something was broken as they should have been easterlies]
Yeppoon: 120 / 156 = Cat 3 (sustained winds) or Cat 2 (gusts)
Rockhampton: 82 / 113 = Cat 1 (sustained winds) or below cyclone strength (gusts)
Gladstone: 59 / 83 = below cyclone strength
Gladstone Airport: 50 / 80 = below cyclone strength
Bundaberg: 50 / 70 = below cyclone strength
Gayndah: 32 / 52 = well below cyclone strength
So actual readings show a borderline Cat 2-3 in Yeppoon and a marginal Cat 1 in Rocky (which, as we know, went through the eye). I understand gusts may have been recorded to around 170-180kph in Yeppoon by non-BoM equipment, which is low to mid Cat 3 but still underwhelming.
I’m on the coast near Bundaberg and it wasn’t as nasty here as ex-Oswald was in 2013. It woke me briefly at 3am, but I’m the only one that I’ve talked to who did wake to it. Just another storm here (thankfully!)
NASA research found that a tropical cyclone with a hot tower in its eyewall was twice as likely to intensify within the next six hours, than a cyclone that lacked a tower…
Ithe Saffir-Simpson Scale depends on wind speed measurement. The TRMM satellite measures rainfall intensity which is not a suitable proxy for wind speed. The suggestion is that the Category 5 intensity was not determined by wind speed measurement but by some subjective process involving TRMM imaging.
JCU have put out a preliminary report.(Link below) Basically just rehashing what the BoM was saying but the evidence from footage I have seen is pretty clear that this wasn’t a Cat 5 it more than likely wasn’t even a Cat 4 going by reported wind speeds it barely made Cat 1 in some areas. The damage being shown is due in no small part to the age of some of the buildings and the lack of enforcement of cyclone rated building standards in others.
Off topic but I should like to send a word of concern to the folks in Queensland who appear about to be surprised by a storm that is currently MUCH stronger than it had originally been forecast to be. Marcia is currently at Category 4 on the scale the US uses and appears to be strengthening still. This storm, Marcia, had been forecast to make landfall as a marginal Category 2. This is an extremely dangerous storm. My thoughts will be with those in Queensland over the coming days.
142
It’ll pass west of me sometime around mid-day today. (and make landfall in half an hour at Yeppoon). It’s been consistant rain, but not heavey rain. So far so good.
72
Begs the question, crosspatch:
Q. How many solar panels and wind farms must be installed to stop Cyclone Marcia?
The Answer can be found here, in this video at 15 seconds in:
Youtube, January 22, 2015:
The Queensland Leader of the Opposition Annastacia Palaszczuk has spoken of her desire to triple the number of Queenslanders with solar.
111
HJ,
May not help unless they were installed 2 centuries ago:
Fron BOM reported 20/02/2015 News.com
“The Bureau of Meteorology says it only has records of four Category 5 cyclones making landfall in Queensland: Cyclone Mahina in Princess Charlotte Bay in 1899, a cyclone in Mackay and another in Innisfail in 1918 (they didn’t have names) and Cyclone Yasi in 2011.”
101
From the Australian.
30
I should add that the two 1918 cyclones in Queensland took about 100 lives.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/eastern.shtml
20
I asked my mate Mr Dylan.
The answer is blowing in the wind.
101
Was it just me?
Have you ever seen more over the top emotive reporting on something as BIG storms go was actually a relative fizzer?
Every single reporter crossed to started his/hers observations with catostrophic or fierce wind or devasting flooding or monumental seas or some other over the top emotive discription.
I hate to “rain on their reports” but that usually happens in the wet/cyclone season up north
It seemed all of the stations were disapointed there was no serious injurys to report.
As the day wore on you could actually feel their collective enthusiasm was waning and that they were disapointed.
While I’m watching all these “live crosses” to evacuation centres I’m looking in the background.
Mums and dads smiling on their mobiles, all the lights on and the kids having an adventure of a lifetime.
It was truly cringe worthy.
220
What happens to wind turbines and solar panels in a cyclone?
70
That answer is definitely ‘blown in the wind!’ 🙂
40
That would be the QLD Premier now.
10
Premier she is now. And on TV reading about the cyclone she looked utterly terrified. Not, I am sure, of the cyclone, but of the fact that she hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
20
Yes, and they will all be paid for by the profits of the evil power companies. Small problem, why would anyone invest in power companies if the socialists are going to confiscate your returns? Labor are good at this, it follows on the proposal to increase council rates on investment properties with the investor being prohibited from increasing rents. Communism by any other name.
20
Wonder how many wind farms would have survived what we had up here.
20
Very wet and cool in Brisbane.
Just waiting for the sandwich-board wearers (the usual suspects posing as objective scientists) to emerge from the woodwork claiming cyclones in cyclone season are unprecedented and extreme storms like Marcia have never happened before this far south and that in future we will get more of these and it’s all our fault and we need to impoverish our people with high energy costs and taxes, or hand over oodles of borrowed money to the UN via over-paid bureaucrats/technocrats to make it all stop.
343
Just want you all to know that I pipped the BOM to the post’
Gosh, it is so easy to be a climate scientist, say any old crap and suddenly it is fact. Hmm…crap…frap…frat…faat…fact…there, that’s climate science logic at its very best.
Peter Miller
February 17, 2015 at 10:14 pm · Reply
Talking of propaganda, I see there is a cyclone approaching Australia.
So I want to be first to say, “This cyclone is further proof of global warming.”
Now I is a real climate scientist.
121
Tropicana time!
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cyclone-marcia-climate-change-is-expanding-the-tropics-20150220-13kdfi.html
10
Your term “sandwich-board waters” is a good one. If these people didn’t have the infallible science label, people would just think of them as a doomsday cult and ignore them. Amazing what a little paint and relabeling can do!
90
If these people didn’t have the infallible science label, people would just think of them as a doomsday cult and ignore them.
Many a true word spoken in a throwaway comment.
Well done, Sheri.
40
Check this link:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/about/eastern.shtml#history
30
Good morning all. Marcia heading straight for us, 83km north. A very compact system, very strong winds at eyewall, but Samuel Hill only 30km SE of the eyewall has winds of 59 kmh to 106 kmh gusts. Rocky Airport 32kmh to 44 kmh. Raining sideways. Hope it loses intensity quickly, will still be very strong if it goes straight over us (due about midday).
130
TC Marcia has now made landfall at Shoalwater Bay, near the Williamson Base.
That’s around 100KM (60 Miles) from where I sit.
Right now the wind has picked up and it’s raining heavily. Rained most of the night. That saying about the calm before the storm is eerily correct, because from around 6.30AM until around 8.30 it was almost totally still, with just the occasional gust of wind and a short shower.
The track has it heading straight at us here in Rockhampton, and while these things (typically) lose strength upon landfall, they still have it projected to be Cat3 when it reaches us here in Rockhampton at around Midday to 1 or 2 PM.
I have a screen copy of the radar image of the Cyclone making landfall, and this was taken at 8.34AM local time, so around 40 minutes ago.
The power is still on, and they tell us that if it goes off, we could be without it for two days. (a harbinger of a future reality)
Ken Stewart is (I think) around three kilometres from where I sit here now.
Link to Cyclone Marcia landfall
Tony.
160
Hi Tony
Around 15km north of the Fitzroy bridges.
Rocky airport 32 to 59 kmh at 9.00 but the wind is much stronger in the last few minutes.
Samuel Hill is only a couple of km from eyewall and 87 to 130kmh. Not Cat 5!
Ken
161
Power off, branches coming off all around, only 30-40km away, so bye for now!
110
Hi Tony, you and Ken Stewart are about 100km north of us here. I was watching and noting pressure gradients and wind speed and directions all day, and I have to say I noticed the same things as you. The previous night as it approached Creal Reef it was certainly showing some very low pressures, but the post-landfall observations just didn’t seem to reflect expectations. Having said that though, it was certainly bad enough and there was more than enough damage and distress for people, this was no mere breeze, it was certainly a cyclone. The eye passed about 50km to the west of us reportedly as Cat 2, and appeared to track along the range, hence the flooding occurring on the western side around Biloela and the Kroombit. Collards and Callide Creeks.
20
Happy to hear that you are safe Tony.
I suspect that this cyclone was no worse than TC AIVU when it hit Ayr in 1989.
Townsville had a very serious cyclone prior to 1988 and the people there were terrified that it was their turn again. I heard several Townsville folk speaking about their experience in that previous cyclone. Then we had Aivu coming at us, and we thought that it would hit Townsville but it landed at Ayr instead. There was 1 casualty because the man would not leave his caravan. The damage was minimal and if I remember correctly Aivu was no more than a cat 3.
10
TC Marcia was definitely not category 4 when it hit land. It was not even close to Yazi or the cyclone that previously hit in the same region. Yepoon for example has experienced far worse damage than the damage caused by Marcia.
20
Jo, I’ve been watching a severe case of Wag the Dog, from BOM and ABC with regard to TC Lam. They built and amazing fiction out of very little then pretended it was and still is an epic event. An bit over an hour ago ABC were still claiming the NT’s Lam cyclone has up to 250 km/h winds as it moves in land.
No one else in the media and BOM noticed that almost none of it has been true or accurate, that it had nothing like that measured wind strength as it came ashore. The highest sustained wind, and highest wind gust from the inner core band of TC Lam last night, as the core’s inner storm band was directly impinging the eastern side of Milingimbi, as it came on shore:
19 / 11:00 pm 24.3 19.3 22.9 92 1.0 SW 54 89 29 48 987.0 – 56.4
Which is only 38.7 % of BOM forecast max wind gust speeds in the eye-wall, which mostly dissolved on radar as it came ashore.
So I’m currently watching the exact same thing occurring just down the coast from me, with TC Monica. 100% of the eye stepped on to land at 9:50 AM on radar. And the following is the logged wind data from the worst part of the southern core, from a site that just went through the inner wall, on the southern side. The wind sensor is still in the eastern inner eye wall so here’s the data as the pressure began to fall from ~1000. Brace yourself:
Latest Weather Observations for Samuel Hill
20/10:00am 23.9 12.6 23.6 98 0.2 SW 89 163 48 88 977.0 976.8 47.8
20/09:36am 24.1 11.7 23.6 97 0.3 SW 95 170 51 92 976.8 976.6 26.8
20/09:31am 24.0 12.6 23.5 97 0.3 SW 89 148 48 80 977.5 977.3 22.4
20/09:30am 24.1 13.2 23.6 97 0.3 SW 87 130 47 70 977.8 977.6 21.6
20/09:27am 24.1 13.2 23.6 97 0.3 SW 87 130 47 70 978.6 978.4 18.6
20/09:16am 24.1 13.2 23.6 97 0.3 SW 87 133 47 72 980.6 980.4 8.6
20/09:08am 24.1 13.9 23.6 97 0.3 SW 83 137 45 74 982.6 982.4 3.4
20/09:00am 24.1 15.2 23.4 96 0.5 SW 76 137 41 74 984.6 984.4 181.2
20/08:56am 24.1 15.9 23.4 96 0.5 SW 72 126 39 68 985.7 985.5 179.6
20/08:45am 24.3 16.7 23.4 95 0.6 WSW 69 122 37 66 987.8 987.6 175.2
20/08:30am 24.5 19.0 23.8 96 0.5 SW 59 106 32 57 989.9 989.7 170.8
20/08:21am 24.8 20.4 24.1 96 0.5 SW 54 91 29 49 991.4 991.2 167.0
20/08:18am 24.7 20.3 24.0 96 0.5 SW 54 96 29 52 991.5 991.3 166.0
20/08:00am 25.1 21.6 24.2 95 0.6 SW 50 83 27 45 993.6 993.4 158.2
20/07:35am 25.3 23.8 24.1 93 0.8 SW 39 67 21 36 995.5 995.3 150.4
20/07:30am 25.4 23.6 24.2 93 0.8 SSW 41 63 22 34 996.0 995.8 149.6
20/07:15am 25.6 24.3 24.4 93 0.8 SSW 39 65 21 35 996.6 996.4 147.8
20/07:10am 25.6 24.3 24.4 93 0.8 SSW 39 65 21 35 996.7 996.5 147.0
20/07:00am 25.6 25.0 24.4 93 0.8 SW 35 67 19 36 997.1 996.9 146.2
20/06:30am 25.8 25.2 24.4 92 1.0 SSW 35 63 19 34 997.8 997.6 141.6
20/06:26am 26.0 26.1 24.6 92 1.0 SW 32 63 17 34 997.8 997.6 141.2
20/06:00am 26.0 26.5 24.6 92 1.0 WSW 30 50 16 27 998.6 998.4 139.4
20/05:35am 26.0 26.6 24.8 93 0.8 SW 30 54 16 29 999.0 998.8 137.8
20/05:34am 25.9 26.9 24.7 93 0.8 SW 28 52 15 28 999.1 998.9 137.8
20/05:30am 25.9 27.2 24.7 93 0.8 SW 26 44 14 24 999.2 999.0 137.4
20/05:29am 25.9 27.6 24.7 93 0.8 SW 24 44 13 24 999.2 999.0 137.0
20/05:00am 26.0 26.3 24.8 93 0.8 SW 32 50 17 27 999.3 999.2 136.2
20/04:00am 25.8 27.2 24.8 94 0.7 SW 26 37 14 20 1000.0 999.9 128.0
20/03:30am 25.6 28.6 24.6 94 0.7 SSW 17 32 9 17 1000.3 1000.2 122.0
___________________________________
Latest Weather Observations for Williamson
20/10:00am 24.1 20.1 23.4 96 0.5 W 50 89 27 48 992.6 992.4 8.8
20/09:57am 24.1 19.2 23.2 95 0.6 W 54 89 29 48 992.3 992.1 8.6
20/09:30am 23.5 17.3 23.2 98 0.2 W 61 89 33 48 990.3 990.1 5.8
20/09:00am 23.1 16.7 22.8 98 0.2 WSW 61 91 33 49 988.3 988.1 110.0
20/08:34am 23.6 17.5 23.3 98 0.2 SW 61 96 33 52 988.0 987.8 104.4
20/08:30am 23.7 18.4 23.4 98 0.2 SW 57 96 31 52 987.8 987.6 104.0
20/08:00am 25.1 20.8 24.8 98 0.2 SSW 56 87 30 47 989.0 988.8 99.8
20/07:30am 25.0 21.4 24.7 98 0.2 SSW 52 82 28 44 990.7 990.5 96.0
20/07:27am 24.9 21.6 24.6 98 0.2 SSW 50 70 27 38 991.0 990.8 95.6
20/07:00am 24.8 22.6 24.5 98 0.2 SSW 44 69 24 37 993.1 992.9 90.8
20/06:30am 25.0 25.0 24.7 98 0.2 S 33 54 18 29 995.0 994.8 83.4
20/06:04am 24.5 24.8 24.2 98 0.2 SSW 30 48 16 26 995.7 995.5 81.6
20/06:00am 24.5 25.1 24.2 98 0.2 SSW 28 43 15 23 996.2 996.1 81.4
20/05:30am 23.9 25.9 23.6 98 0.2 SSE 19 37 10 20 997.2 997.1 79.4
20/05:00am 23.4 23.4 23.1 98 0.2 S 28 41 15 22 997.9 997.8 77.4
20/04:47am 23.1 22.9 22.8 98 0.2 S 28 46 15 25 998.2 998.1 77.2
20/04:30am 23.2 23.5 22.9 98 0.2 S 26 37 14 20 998.9 998.8 73.8
20/04:00am 23.1 22.6 22.8 98 0.2 S 30 41 16 22 999.1 999.0 71.0
20/03:30am 23.0 23.5 22.7 98 0.2 S 24 37 13 20 999.5 999.4 64.8
20/03:00am 22.8 23.2 22.5 98 0.2 S 24 37 13 20 1000.3
So the max sustained is about consistent with a weak Category-2 (Aust region) within the strongest part of the storm’s inner core
But the associated max gusts are at the top of Cat 2, and a couple fall just slightly inside category-3 range (anything over 165km/h). I might bring up that 200 km/h used to be the cat-3 gust boundary for most of my life, but these are modern ‘special’ cat-3s.
The storm wind was ~40 km/h stronger when near Percy Island at 4:30 AM.
20/04:30am 25.1 4.8 25.1 100 0.0 SW 141 208 76 112 975.7 974.2 –
Now go turn on ABC (sorry for recommending this) and it’s a traumatic Cat-5 horror-story! They are taking us all for mugs.
Pure Wag-the-Dog.
473
Update: Winds decreased.
Latest Weather Observations for Samuel Hill
20/10:30am 23.5 10.3 23.2 98 0.2 WSW 98 154 53 83 979.4 979.2 61.2
20/10:21am 23.6 10.8 23.3 98 0.2 WSW 96 154 52 83 979.0 978.8 58.6
Latest Weather Observations for Williamson
20/10:30am 24.2 20.8 23.2 94 0.7 WNW 46 85 25 46 995.0 994.8 10.0
20/10:27am 24.6 21.7 23.4 93 0.8 WNW 44 85 24 46 994.3 994.1 10.0
161
Confirmed. Wind speed decreased rapidly as it moved on, so a small cat-2 system core that’s moving through quickly.
Latest Weather Observations for Samuel Hill
20/11:00am 23.8 14.2 23.6 99 0.1 WNW 80 120 43 65 985.6 985.4 69.2
20/10:49am 23.7 12.7 23.4 98 0.2 W 87 135 47 73 983.6 983.4 67.8
20/10:38am 23.6 11.8 23.3 98 0.2 WSW 91 152 49 82 981.4 981.2 64.2
Latest Weather Observations for Williamson
20/11:00am 24.3 22.3 23.3 94 0.7 WNW 39 56 21 30 996.7 996.6 11.2
Looks like Rockhampton will get the eye in an hour and Yepoon the eastern eye wall from now.
192
Thanks Ken & Unmentionable, I had a feeling this might be a beat-up.
You have motivated me to check, and of course keep the records before they disappear.
For others, its not hard, eg
http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/observations/qldall.shtml?ref=hdr
BoM second line menu bar, choose State, then drill down, eg region, then station …
“issued every 30 minutes, with the page automatically refreshed every 10 minutes”
Generally seems to update within about 5 minutes, but won’t necessarily refresh automatically in your browser.
Some stations seem to throw in times in addition to hour/half hour.
It is interesting and perhaps indicative, that as far as I have been able to check, no anemometers or stations have broken or gone offline. During Yasi, Townsville Aero was off (switched off or broke) and I recall that Willis I. broke.
202
I’m so glad someone is doing this. I’m bracing myself, and not for the low that’s about to hit Brisbane as this cyclone travels south. I’m bracing myself for the BS and the beat up.
Before going off-line Ken earlier raised questions around what the actual readings were versus what was being ‘reported’.
162
I thought it was a beat up before TC Marcia landed. It was a gut feeling that this cyclone was a weak one. Yazi was exceptional and there had been other cyclones that were cat 4. TC Marcia was about the same as TC Aivu.
20
Unmentionable, I appreciate that we need to be cautious, and I agree this cyclone may have been overhyped (some photos I’ve seen of damage at Byfield does not look at all consistent with Cat 5, especially the south-eastern quadrant..) but I don’t think you can use Samuel Hill to gauge that.
Look at the directional readings. It was reading SW’ly winds from early morning. Yet the cyclone passed DIRECTLY to its west. The winds should (and would) have backed to north or north-westerly, through east? I would put $$ on the station being compromised in some way, so I don’t think it’s a reliable gauge of actual wind speeds.
We can’t forget too that BoM technical reports always had the strongest winds at a very small radius, to the tune of 35km. They obviously dropped significantly outside that distance, which was a good thing. And it lost its puff very quickly once over land too, again, thankfully. Having said that, I would like to know what they saw to make it a Cat 5.
And for the record, Karoly etc are all out with the usual “climate change will make cyclones worse and come further south as warmer atmosphere can hold more water” etc etc. No mention of less temp differential between the poles and the equator potentially offsetting this. Nor that this is CQ’s first cyclonic impact since Fran in the early-mid 1990’s….
71
The rumour about who hyped what and why seems to depend on who you talk to.
So far I have not heard anyone from the BoM blame AGW for TC Marcia. I’ve seen one MSM article regurgitate the global warming meme (in the Silly) but that’s a journo passing along what the experts tell him.
It would seem it’s the government climate scientists (eg Karoly) who are blaming AGW for TC Marcia.
If anyone hyped up the category of TC Marcia it could only have been the BoM, not the MSM who only reported what they were told. But the BoM may have had either good reason to believe the strength would escalate, or they may have had a dodgy model which gave a high estimate. Deceptive hype is not the only possible explanation when plain old incompetence and chaos can explain it adequately.
Also, the BoM have not yet blamed AGW for the cyclone.
It’s been very much a tag team of hype, with each actor playing their small part.
Also, at the end of the day, there was still a trail of destruction despite it being only category 2.
92
I think I’d be somewhat less peeved by BOM if it had not massive moved the goal posts on the category boundaries of cyclones with its thoroughly ludicrous “Australian Region Scale”.
I will never accept the proposition that a system with no closed eye-wall and gross structural malformations and sustained winds of only 63 to 88 km/h can possibly be considered a ‘Tropical cyclone’.
It is not. It’s a tropical storm. What does BOM have against this excellent concept and term of a ‘tropical storm’ as the progenitor of cyclones? What failed genius at BOM thought that was a good idea?
In my view the US Saffir-Simpson scale is a vastly more credible and rational scale of assigning tropical storm or cyclone impact category and threat status, and rationally guiding civil understanding. BOM’s ad-hoc classification boundaries seem perverse, they generating needless confusion, they seem arbitrary, and are clearly very misleading.
The BOM tropical cyclone classification system is a stinker, a failure. If you ask the public where the boundaries are, and what they signify, they would have no clue at all – at all.
122
If we wanted to make a rational system that makes sense to everyday people in Australia it could not eb simpler.
TS = 60 to 90 km/hr Gusts
Cat-1 = 90 to 125 km/h Gusts
Cat-2 = 126 to 175 km/h Gusts
Cat-3 = 176 to 225 km/h Gusts
Cat-4 = 226 to 275 km/h Gusts
Cat-5 – 275 to 350 km/h Gusts
People would understand and relate much more easily to that sort of basic intensity scale.
132
Actually the international definition for “hurricane” is >117 km/h. In my book nothing below that is a Hurricane anywhere in the World.
30
The largest wind gust I saw was 156m./hr. at YEPOON about 1.30 PM; everything else was 50-60-70, so it was low Cat 2 when it made landfall and diminished from then; plenty of rain though.
40
Sorry 156Km./hr.
30
the answer is simple… I think you might want to start with David Jones because he is a part of the “group” involved with those emails.
20
Perkins (BoM) quoted in SMH winds from MARcIA 285 kph gusts 208 average.Where?
90
since early evening yesterday, ABC local in Brisbane was talking to people up north, trying to whip everyone into a frenzy. “it’s raining” a caller would say. “wow” the abc presenter would respond. and so it went on, hour after hour.
since TC Marcia made landfall, i have monitored all tv coverage, listened to abc NQ, checked NQ press, and the worst i have seen as regards footage is some fairly wild seas and some trees which are barely moving.
in comments above, James Bradley quotes BOM re Cat 5 cyclones, with most recent being 1918. that would explain why all coverage i’ve heard has claimed it’s the worst cyclone in a hundred years. yet i cannot find a single result online making such a claim. everything i found online says worst “in 25 years”.
what is extraordinary is how little “live” coverage there has been. it’s all scary rhetoric from BOM, the Premier, etc, such as:
ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Situation ‘desperate’ as category five storm pummels Queensland coast
Updated 5 minutes ago
Severe Tropical Cyclone Marcia is set to bring “calamity” to Queensland as the category five storm crosses the coast bearing destructive wind gusts up to 285 kilometres per hour…
Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said a “desperate situation” was unfolding, and emergency service workers would themselves be forced to take cover soon.
“This is going to be a calamity, there is absolutely no doubt about that – our primary focus from this point on is the safety of all human life in that area,” he said…
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said severe damage was expected and lives were at risk.
“Over the next few hours, many thousands of Queenslanders are about to go through a harrowing and terrifying experience,” she said.
“I want those people to know that we are with you every step of the way – we will be standing by your side – this a severe cyclone.”…
Ms Palaszczuk said there were reports that people were still driving around on the roads in Yeppoon and surrounding coastal areas…
“Can I please stress to everyone do not go outdoors – stay inside your homes, that is the safest place to be during this time,” she said, adding that the noise of the cyclone “will be extreme”…
Further south, Bundaberg Mayor Mal Forman said authorities were taking advantage of relatively calm weather to doorknock residents…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-20/tropical-cyclone-marcia-category-five-looms-off-queensland-coast/6153166
overseas:
‘Destructive’ tropical cyclone Marcia hits Queensland
BBC News-23 minutes ago
It (BOM) said “destructive winds” would threaten communities between St Lawrence and Gladstone in the morning, and Capricornia and Burnett districts later in the day.
Local residents should be prepared for an evacuation if advised by the authorities, the BoM added. It also warned about possible tidal and flash flooding…
Australia’s northeast coast braces for category five cyclone
Deutsche Welle – 1 hour ago
Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters the most important thing was people were safe. “Over the next 24 hours, Queenslanders are about to go through a harrowing and terrifying experience..Police Commissioner Ian Stewart, who called it a “desperate situation.” …
as for TC Lam:
ABC: Tropical Cyclone Lam: Storm crosses mainland coast as category four; Ramingining battered
Updated 20 Feb 2015, 9:56am
Lam hammered the small community of Ramingining but appeared not to have caused any fatalities or major damage to homes…
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Adam Morgan said the storm would weaken during Friday but was still expected to be cyclonic until at least 7:00pm and possibly be a category one cyclone overnight into Saturday.
He said people should not be tempted to emerge from cyclone shelters while in the eye of the storm.
“It is only a small cyclone, a very small eye, so that time won’t be long until the winds pick up again,” he said…
Ms Golsby-Smith said when Ramingining was in the eye of the cyclone, people emerged from their homes to survey the damage.
Despite downed trees and powerlines, it appeared little damage had been done to buildings…
Before mobile phone communications off Elcho Island failed, residents reported wind tearing trees from the root and throwing them 100 metres.
They also reported some houses had lost their roofs.The strong winds also caused weather equipment to fail on Elcho Island and Millingimbi, making it harder to estimate the full strength of winds…
ABC reporter Steven Schubert, who was in the Indigenous community of Maningrida when the cyclone crossed the coast about 160km away, said the town appeared to have escaped the worst.
He reported that there was minimal damage, although a power line was down…
The BoM said there had been storm surges associated with the cyclone of about one metre in Nhulunbuy but the cyclone crossed the coast between high tides, making the storm surges less severe than they may have otherwise been.
On Thursday, hundreds of people from the Aboriginal community of Warruwi were evacuated to Darwin on helicopters and planes…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-20/tropical-cyclone-lam-crosses-mainland-coast/6153902
nonetheless, i hope everyone is safe.
91
“i have monitored all tv coverage, listened to abc NQ, checked NQ press, and the worst i have seen as regards footage is some fairly wild seas and some trees which are barely moving.”
—
There is a cyclone, a small localized Cat-2 moving fast south. Other than that its pure hype Pat,
It’s been really doing my head in watching the data, then listening the melodramatic vastly inaccurate almost entirely imaginary and speculative garbage on ABC-24.
Pat, the data is right there, one or two clicks away! But is the BOM getting on tele to clarify?
Heck no, they just ‘downgraded’ it to Cat-4! … gotta play this sucker out …
So there’s nothing accidental about this farce, BOM knows perfectly well it’s not a Cat 5, nor a Cat 4, and not even a Cat-3! There was just one logged wind speed of 170 km/h, that just falls into the lower range of a very weak cat-3 gust (Aust region), whilst it was making landfall. It’s down to 140 to 150 km/h max now.
LIke is said, doing my head in that this is what it has come to.
412
I agree Pat.
I have sat out a couple of bad ones.
Vehicles were chained together to stop them being blown by the wind.
There is no way in the world that anyone would have stood outside with a microphone or a camera.
All windows were steel mesh protected (not taped).
Cyclone Trixie (Dampier 1975) is the strongest I know of. The only vegetation left standing were ghost gums and spinifex grass. All other vegetation was removed from the saturated ground by the wind.
I have close relatives in Rocky. They said Cyclone Marcia was not pleasant, but not as bad as the media portrayed.
I hope Tony and Ken are OK when their power is reconnected. It was a good day for wind turbines; not so good for solar.
160
If those wind turbines were as “soundly” constructed as some in the UK then they would have been removed from the saturated ground by the wind, or more likely blown flat.
120
@toorightmate
I’ve been through the same with cars cabled down and wind blown grit abrading paint off rocker panels. Bark stripped from the trees was also common place.
The tell-tale sign is that a Cat 4 and Cat 5 will leave no leaves, and often not one branch on any tree within the core’s path, and almost no tree trunks either. If that level of total vegetation obliteration isn’t widespread in the path of the eye, then it was certainly not a Cat 4 or Cat 5. If it was a Cat 4 hitting Yepoon or Rocky there won’t be a leaf left on any tree in either of those places.
141
News.com.au are winding up their disaster storm rhetroic in Brisbane, even suggesting a repeat of the Brisbane floods of 2011.
Of course they were devastating as the Wivinhoe dam was full to an illegal, dangerous and near fatal 190%, thanks to advice that it would never rain again from climate experts like Tim Flannery. An earthworks dam will collapse if it overflows, dropping 3 Sydney harbours into the Brisbane valley and destroying Brisane. Wivenhoe was built to prevent such floods, not create one. Thanks to our wonderful ‘scientists’, a million people could have drowned. It was down to hours to empty the dam faster than the rain was falling. Now we are being told it was natural, an extreme event. It wasn’t. It was criminal negligence.
345
For those who are wondering how any dam can be 190% full, the risk with an earthenwork dam is so great, it is given a 100% margin of error. It is full when it is half full. In semitropical areas, you can fill a dam in a night with a 200-300mm rainfall. There were even laws passed that the dam should never get to this height, but the administrators and engineers were told it would never happen. We were in an endless drought and “even the rains which fall will not fill the dams” (Tim Flannery).
Of course there was an inquiry. We should have had politicians and Greenies facing jail sentences, but they blamed the engineers. The massive damage was nothing compared to what nearly happened. It would have been the worst civilian tragedy since the tsunami hit Lisbon, which was at least a purely natural event with no one to blame. The prophets of doom nearly made it happen. Now they are claiming it was a natural disaster.
374
Peter Hannam says we are all rooned.
‘Storms such as the category 5 Cyclone Marcia, which crossed the central Queensland coast on Friday, “are going to become more common in the future along the eastern seaboard of Australia,” Professor Turton from James Cook University told Fairfax Media.’
SMH
111
Turton is suggesting that cyclones will travel further south to NSW in a AGW world, but that is just theoretical nonsense.
Going back over the past hundred years, there appears to be no correlation, the LIA was just coming to a close in the southern hemisphere during the 1890s.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/nsw.shtml
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On the BOM tropical cyclone tracker, one hit Milford Sound.
10
I guess the development of the tropical north will have to be abandoned, even though there are less and lower category cyclones at this time. That will change, of course, sans anything humans do. Just read the harrowing accounts from the last 40 years of the 1800s. Now who’s policies would the abandoning of northern development be consistent with? Professor @ JCU? Alas BOM thought-police weren’t keen on an inconvenient history, so re-wrote the bits that were glaringly ‘wrong’.
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Yes, eg. Hyping Cat 3 cyclones into Cat 5 [as with Marcia] will certainly make them more common.
208kmh at Middle Percy at 4.30 am was the strongest I could find.
102
But, but …
Isn’t Australia expecting El Niño?
BoM: 2014–15 Australian Tropical Cyclone Outlook
And, the BoM says El Niño causes Reduced tropical cyclone numbers.
So, how do we get more cyclones?
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It’s a simple “trick” used by all global warmist body’s around the world when reality doesn’t fit the models.
Or the data just flatly refuses to fit the narrative.
It’s called shifting the goalposts.
Unmentionable gives it a better clarity than I can here.
#2.3.1.1
If temperatures flatly refuse to give you heatwaves, then simply lower the criteria that designates what “is” a heatwave.
Same goes with cyclones.
If wind speeds flatly refuse to cooperate by giving you more and bigger cyclones.
Then lower the speeds that designates what “is” a cyclone and what is a tropical storm.
Like the hottest year that never was.
They begrudgingly corrected it but not till they gave the propoganda a good flogging first.
They’ll do exactly the same here.
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Anyone who makes such claims is totally dumb.
The wet season is cyclone season. There is nothing unusual about having cyclones at this time of year. Every other year there has been at least 3 cyclones that hit the northern part of Australia.
How is it that these people do not understand that cyclone season is a natural phenomenon? I am not a scientist yet I know that there is a cyclone season. These cyclones will continue to happen, and most of them will be no more than a cat 2.
Yes, I have experienced a cyclone. I never imagined that I would ever experience something like that, but it happened when I was living in Townsville. It is a fact of life.
The climate clowns need to stop the hype.
30
Well said, TdeF. There was not only no one on watch, there was no one at home and when they got to work on Monday morning and saw where the water levels were they soiled themselves and dumped it all over Brisbane.
Talk about using the Palace Guard to kill the King!
But to get back to Jo’s thread, Marcia [Marseeuh] was a pussycat. And as Ken says, there was no way it was a Cat5.
It’s amazing how they can say it has windspeeds of ~ 290kmh and a BP of ~ 930 but when it gets to the first AWS like Samuel Hill, waddya know, it’s suddenly 170kmh and 976 BP.
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TdeF, with all due respect, Wivanhoe is not an earth dam. It does however have a number of earthern spillways (put in well after the dam’s construction) which are designed to wash out if overtopped, to prevent overtopping of the main dam wall if inflow is exceeding the capacity of the gates to let it out, and at full capacity. You’re correct though that the usual “100% capacity” is the drinking water storage capacity of the dam, which is actually only 50% of the dam’s true ‘full’ capacity. That other 50% is for the purposes of flood mitigation, as Wivanhoe was constructed as a dual purpose, water supply / flood mitigation structure.
The engineers were not holding water due to ‘global warming’. On that fateful few days, the BoM forecast was for the extremely heavy rain to move south and east, from over the dam to over Brisbane and beyond. The forecast falls over the dam and catchments would not have filled Wivanhoe to capacity, and there were very real fears that any dam releases would coincide with a local-rainfall-induced high river level, and actually cause flooding in the lower Brisbane River. So the engineers held back. Problem was, the system stalled over the catchment and the dam itself, resulting in massive, FAST dam level rises. I have heard unconfirmed reports that the first earthern spillway was around 30cm from overtopping, which would have released a virtual wall of water towards the city. The system stalled over the dam instead of moving southeast – so the rainfall in the city didn’t eventuate, but the dam engineers were forced to release very very quickly as a result.
I agree that water could have been released from the dam earlier, with this event on the horizon. That’s probably what you’re referring to I guess. But there was still sufficient dam capacity to ‘take’ the event, just a little less room for error (which is unfortunately what happened). And my position is that the engineers had very little case to answer – hindsight is always 20/20 and I’m certain if they knew the rainfall was to stay over the dam, they would have released. But they only had the forecasts to work from, and those forecasts said the system was tracking towards Brisbane, so earlier releases were a very bad idea. I really feel for them.
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LittleDavey83 … likewise with all due respect, where do you get your information from? If what you say is the case then there’d be no basis for the class action currently being brought against the State Government for its alleged negligence. The ‘engineers’ did not make an early release of water when they should have done so because they did not want to flood some ‘bridges’ in low lying rural and semi-rural downstream land, that’s in the Report. In addition, whilst they don’t admit to it, it is apparent that they did not want to discharge the excess storage due to their uncertainty of future water supply influenced by the drought, the rantings of Flannery et al. and, the economic value of the resource that they had stored.
You don’t mention the near destruction of Toowoomba … which is independent of the Wivenhoe catchment.
Brisbane received a significant amount of heavy rain at the time.
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Here are some images of the dam.
If the fuse plugs blew Brisbane would have been destroyed!
40
Streetcred – I don’t believe there IS a basis for the class action. I get my information from being in Brisbane at the time, and being a long-time weather buff. I studied this system, I was watching it in real time, and I was in the Weatherzone group raising the alarm about the Lockyer Valley well before BoM (I will never forget the chill going down my spine when I saw how those rivers were spiking). I have spent a lot of time on post-incident analysis of this event (though it was some time ago now). I’ve read the report in its entirety, tho again, some time ago. I also have civil engineering qualifications so have the capacity to understand technical information and reports.
I agree that keeping the low-lying crossings open as long as possible contributed, there were a number of contributing factors. I also agree that more water was being kept in the leadup than “should” have been, but I don’t agree it was a significant factor. The main factor was the forecast situation differed greatly from the actual situation. I don’t have the pre-event forecasts saved on this computer, but I would guess you should be able to find them online through BoM’s flood event report. I was watching this closely because I lived in a potential Logan River flood area at the time, and worked on the Gold Coast for a govt department which is heavily involved in disaster response.
What actually happened was a very good result for me personally as the Logan R didn’t rise as anticipated, and the Gold Coast was practically spared compared to what ‘could’ have happened. The rain stayed north, and intensified very quickly, that was not what was forecast. The dam had sufficient capacity to hold the forecast rainfall, but the situation which occurred was vastly different.
Toowoomba is a different situation, and mostly flows to the west, not to Brisbane. I’ve seen the hydrological reports about Toowoomba’s flooding and it was largely a development and urbanisation problem. The Lockyer and Bremer do flow into the Brisbane River – another reason the engineers were holding water back, as those rivers do NOT have flood mitigation structures. If the forecast came off, and the rain moved below Wivanhoe, all that water would have fallen into the river catchments anyway – if they were releasing water on top of that, the flood would without a doubt have been even worse than what it was.
In summary – agreed they were holding more than they ‘should’ have been, but they could only rely on the forecasts they had at the time. They were fine for the forecast situation, but the rain did not move south as forecast and so created an issue that was difficult to deal with. It’s hard to fault the engineers involved (though I don’t agree with everything) – and I think the class action is an absolute beat up and completely unwarranted. Another case of people wanting someone else to bail them out from their mistakes (not everyone mind you, I’m well aware that some people were legitimately caught by surprise in areas which had never flooded. But many others took the risk and lost, now want others to foot the bill).
And agreed scaper – if the fuse plugs went, it would have been a disaster which would completely pale the event which DID occur.
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I noted that the Wivenhoe and Sommerset Dams had 100% flood space available two days ago – they were ready this time.
20
It was not criminal negligence at all. Wivenhoe was reasonably well managed through that flood. The only fault that I saw was that for about 4 hours the authorities, stunned by the previous day’s Lockyer and Toowoomba flooding, failed to notice that next morning it was again raining at 2 inches an hour for 4 hours across much of the Wivenhoe catchment.
As for the beat-up. Channel 7 devoted their whole morning show to coverage of the cyclone. Maybe also Channel 9, and I don’t know if others also.
It was laughable to see a reporter broadcasting from St Lawrence, which had been forecast to be in or near the eye of the cyclone, in a bit of a breeze, as the cyclone failed to keep its rendezvous, slowing and changing its direction to the east.
Whatever Channel 7’s intention had been, their commitment to this cyclone forced them to fill the allotted time. With the forecast turning out to be less than precise this led to an awful lot of repetition which made even good information eventually seem like BS.
The lesson there is that modern technology has so far reduced the cost of spreading around that this has become possible. Not just with this cyclone but the whole AGW thing generally. In earlier times scientists mounted expeditions so that The National Geographic could show us first photos and later the odd movie of glaciers in Tierra del Fuego or Greenland calving into the ocean. Now cruise ships sail to these places, carrying people with cheap and marvellously effective digital cameras and video cameras.
Even pseudo scientists can persuade universities to contribute to landing them on Antarctica, where they can cause their ship to get stuck in the ice, depriving real scientists of the resources needed to carry out their programs.
30
Re: 100% full.
So far as I know, for the Burrendong Dam on the Macquarie River, 100% is spillway level. Burrendong has floodgates which are I think about 6 metres high, which can hold water to that height above spillway level.
Sometimes Burrendong holds water to above 100%. I remember that from memory in the winter of about 1990 after a wet period it went to 137% full. Over a few weeks of water releases this dropped to 117%, whereupon the early morning local news announced record flooding in Bathurst, upstream from the dam.
The dam that day went to 175% full. However because of the increasing surface area, this was only 6 m above spillway level, which astonished me. The flood downstream in Dubbo was 2 metres lower than it would have been without the dam.
20
What you have to remember is that Climate “Scientists” are running around in ever decreasing circles looking for the missing heat, rising oceans, etc. so their measurements of the rotational wind speed have to be adjusted by subtracting their gyrations.
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The BOM, the MSM and the ABC are certainly taking a huge pasting over at the Weatherzone Forum [ Severe Tropical Cyclone Marcia (Coral Sea) February 2015 – GENERAL DISCUSSION. pages 94 > ] for a gross over the top extremist catastrophe type hyping, “hyperbole overload” was the description, of both the strength and the dangers of what, going by the reports of those close to the action and experienced in cyclone impacts, is a barely decent cyclone following landfall.
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Thank you for making a dedicated thread and moving those Jo, a few hours sleep later.
The BOM downgraded it to tropical low at about 5 PM.
But their spokesman is on ABC TV right now 5:20 EST and is still calling it a cyclone, indeed he just called it a Cat-2 again. Then went on to added that they hope to downgrade it to a tropical low tomorrow morning!
“Lazarus, come forth!” … “surely he stinketh?”
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A storm in a D-cup.
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Unmentionable –
just saw your comment. thanx for the response.
TVNZ is a government-owned national broadcaster, but is 90%commercially funded, with the board appointed by the Minister of Broadcasting (according to Wikipedia). at time of posting this, this is how the Live blog begins, & the ***opening line is showing up on google news:
20 Feb: TVNewZealand: ‘Cyclone Sandwich’ as Marcia and Lam warnings intensify in Australia
***6.08pm: Tropical Cyclone Marcia has wreaked havoc on a big weekend of sport planned in south-east Queensland.
Already, tonight’s A-League clash between Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory has been called off.
At the biggest risk is Australia’s World Cup match against Bangladesh on Saturday at the Gabba, which appears destined to be washed out.
???5.50pm: The arrival of Marcia and Lam on Australian shores is the first time since satellite records began that two severe cyclones have crossed the coast so close together…
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/cyclone-sandwich-marcia-and-lam-warnings-intensify-in-australia-6238819
wreaked havoc on the sporting schedule! u gotta love it.
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The cyclone sandwich…the only useful fact left unsaid was that the cyclones made landfall 2,500km apart!
90
ABC Hype! LOL.
check the 27 pics of DEVASTATION – do not miss any, they load fast.
also check the pic further down of the intact awnings on the GIDDY GOAT cafe
ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Central Queensland towns devastated as storm tracks across state
Updated 20 Feb 2015, 5:29pm
Two staff members of the Yeppoon Hotel had to be rescued from an elevator when power was cut.
Fay Brewer and Vikki Smith were stuck for about half an hour before several men used a car jack to wedge open the doors.
Yeppoon resident Peter Lowe felt the top storey of his house shake as cyclone Marcia approached.
He bunkered down with his wife and two daughters playing monopoly…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-20/cyclone-marcia-damage-across-central-queensland/6163626
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el gordo forgot to give the link to Hannam/SMH, which also includes the following plus…
Cyclone Marcia: Climate change is expanding the tropics
Kevin Walsh, a cyclone expert at the University of Melbourne agreed that Cyclone Marcia was an abnormal storm.
“It’s pretty unusual for a category 5 cyclone to strike the coast of Queensland this far south,” Associate Professor Walsh said…
The Bureau of Meteorology said the near-simultaneous landing of Cyclone Lam on the Northern Territory coast and Cyclone Marcia is the first recorded instance of twin severe cyclone events.
Professor David Karoly, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, said the prospect of fewer – but more intense – cyclones in the western Pacific basin under global warming is because of expected changes to atmospheric circulation.
The expansion of the tropics would likely result in a strengthening of the high-pressure belt over southern Australia, leading to reductions in rainfall, Professor Karoly said….
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cyclone-marcia-climate-change-is-expanding-the-tropics-20150220-13kdfi.html
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The worst of the measured offshore data:
Take note Percy Island was logging data after the main part of the core had passed but that station is now offline. I kept a copy and here’s the worst of it, if you didn’t see it:
Latest Weather Observations for Middle Percy Island
20/05:19am 23.9 12.4 23.9 100 0.0 SW 91 145 49 78 984.1 982.7 –
20/05:18am 23.8 11.9 23.8 100 0.0 SW 93 145 50 78 984.1 982.7 –
20/05:09am 23.9 9.6 23.9 100 0.0 SW 106 154 57 83 982.4 981.0 –
20/05:00am 24.1 8.5 24.1 100 0.0 SW 113 159 61 86 980.4 979.0 –
20/04:49am 24.4 5.8 24.4 100 0.0 SW 130 170 70 92 978.9 977.5 –
20/04:46am 24.6 5.2 24.6 100 0.0 SW 135 176 73 95 977.8 976.4 –
20/04:30am 25.1 4.8 25.1 100 0.0 SW 141 208 76 112 975.7 974.2 – PEAK GUST
20/04:24am 25.1 5.2 25.1 100 0.0 SW 139 200 75 108 973.8 972.4 –
20/04:17am 25.0 4.7 25.0 100 0.0 SW 141 196 76 106 973.4 972.0 –
20/04:00am 24.7 1.3 24.7 100 0.0 SW 156 200 84 108 971.8 970.4 – PEAK SUSTAINED
20/03:39am 24.6 1.6 24.6 100 0.0 SSW 154 196 83 106 971.6 970.2 85.6
20/03:30am 24.6 3.3 24.6 100 0.0 S 145 189 78 102 973.8 972.4 84.6
20/03:28am 24.6 3.3 24.6 100 0.0 S 145 180 78 97 973.7 972.3 84.4
20/03:09am 24.7 4.2 24.7 100 0.0 S 141 176 76 95 975.9 974.5 83.0
20/03:00am 24.6 5.5 24.6 100 0.0 S 133 165 72 89 978.4 977.0 82.4
20/02:50am 24.4 6.2 24.4 100 0.0 SSE 128 182 69 98 979.9 978.5 81.6
20/02:38am 24.4 8.3 24.4 100 0.0 SSE 117 150 63 81 982.5 981.1 80.2
20/02:26am 24.6 10.5 24.6 100 0.0 SSE 107 139 58 75 985.0 983.7 79.2
20/02:15am 24.6 12.2 24.6 100 0.0 SSE 98 124 53 67 987.2 985.8 77.6
That is consistent with a Cat-3 (Australian region that is)
The upper category boundary definition for Cat-3 sustained winds is 159 km/h, but Marcia’s highest measured sustained winds were 156 km/h.
The upper category boundary definition for Cat-3 wind Gusts is 224 km/h, but Marcia’s highest measured wind gust was 208 km/h.
__
The earlier (yesterday evening) Creal reef data was a close pass with the eye wall but the sensor did not interact directly with the inner core band, but remained outside of it by maybe 5 km NW or so. But it did pass through the outer and mid core banding.
Latest Weather Observations for Creal Reef
19/06:39pm 15.7 – – – – SW 139 172 75 93 978.2 – –
19/06:37pm 24.1 – – – – SW 141 172 76 93 978.5 – –
19/06:36pm 12.9 – – – – SW 141 172 76 93 978.4 – –
19/06:32pm 23.6 – – – – SW 143 172 77 93 978.3 – –
19/06:31pm -0.2 – – – – SW 145 178 78 96 978.3 – –
19/06:30pm 24.7 – – – – SW 145 178 78 96 978.4 – –
19/06:20pm 21.7 – – – – SSW 146 183 79 99 977.8 977.8 –
19/06:17pm -15.0 – – – – SW 145 183 78 99 978.2 – –
19/06:15pm 24.3 – – – – SW 145 183 78 99 978.4 – –
19/06:14pm -30.2 – – – – SW 145 189 78 102 978.6 – –
19/06:09pm 24.9 – – – – SW 145 189 78 102 978.8 – –
19/06:07pm -20.3 – – – – SW 146 189 79 102 978.8 – – PEAK SUSTAINED & PEAK GUST COINCIDE
19/06:00pm 11.9 – – – – SW 143 187 77 101 979.5 – –
19/05:49pm 24.0 – – – – SW 143 176 77 95 979.6 – –
19/05:30pm 26.0 – – – – SW 137 167 74 90 981.6 – –
19/05:20pm 26.2 – – – – SW 128 – 69 – – 983.3 –
This also was consistent with measurement of mid-strength Cat-3 under Australian region classification. So as far as the data is concerned the storm reached Cat 3 over water, and then was in a weakening phase towards a Cat-2 as it came ashore as a high Cat-2, with a single Cat-3 level gust of 170 km/h.
————————————-
Just the facts ma’me
222
Thanks – another set to hang on to.
Wondering why Rosslyn Bay managed to be calm at 12:30pm. Nothing unusual all day.
70
Of course BOM is telling whoppers again. They’ve got themselves into a fever about two cyclones all at once.
But I have an important question to ask.
This left-wing excitement is predicated on one claim: that Global Warming (AGW) causes “Extreme Weather.”
This is the basis of the mad left-wing ABC scramble with cyclones, bush fires etc. Rain. No rain.
Ill-considered that the flawed use of the Greenhouse Effect of CO2 has proven to be, it is nevertheless a theory.
What is the nuts and bolts theory behind the claim that AGW causes extreme and deadly weather events?
I have never heard any. Has anyone? Jo?
Warming (as it would be in higher latitudes, not at the equator) would only reduce gradients. Anyone?
Regards, Whoppers.
62
I’m glad TC Marcia wasn’t as strong as predicted, I know CAGW alarmists reading this will be confused but it’s ok to care for the wellbeing of others, I’m sure there’ll be other natural disasters to wet the bed over.
This is reminiscent of cyclone Nancyboy Melbourne 1985 that bothered a few alfresco diners and mussed up some perms, awful just awful…
171
Glad to hear it seems to have passed OK.
The biggest difference in the weather is this: 40 years ago, most of Australia would be ignorant of this storm unless they themselves were under it. Today sitting in Scotland I can probably watch it live.
If you are an alarmophile and you want to want to get your kicks from watching weather porn …
162
I like the “weather porn” statement!!
10
These little ones can be very nasty in a small area.
Ada that took out the Whitsundays in 70 was small. It was destroying Airlie, while the sun was shining in Bowen.
It was not only the ABC, all the TV stations were at it. I guess they have to play it up after they send crews to cover the things.
I don’t want to disparage the losses many have suffered, but from what I’ve seen of the damage at Yeppoon, this thing was a kitten compared to ADA. After it the arrears near the strong parts of her had not a single leaf left on any plant. Buildings were not damaged, but obliterated.
It is not just this one, it is the same every time.
At least this one they got close to right with the timing. Some might be interested in my account, for another sight, of one they got very wrong.
It was 1985 or 6, & I was running the marine division for South Mole Island in the Whitsundays. It was stores day, when our 90Ft barge loaded fuel, our freezer truck & our major order of stores for the week.
We had been watching a cyclone out in the Coral Sea for a few days, but at 5.00 AM the forecast was it would not affect us in the next 48 hours. The island powerhouse was getting low on diesel so at 6.00 AM I confirmed with the MacKay fuel supplier to send 15,000 gallons of diesel, 5,000 of petrol, & 1,000 of two stroke mix up on the tanker.
I sent the two large boats 29 & 24 meter International catamarans, off to our cyclone bolt hole on the mainland, & arranged for their families to go to a large high safe home that night. I kept the 60Ft island ferry out, as the resort requested 3 departures at 8.00 AM, midday & 4.00 PM for any guests who wanted off the island. It would take its chances at Shute harbor, as would the barge, after getting the supplies to the island.
9 AM the ferry is back, & the barge is at the jetty, pumping diesel ashore, & unloading stores. The wind is up, & it’s getting a bit rough at the jetty. The bureau correct their forecast, we have only 24 hours before the cyclone reaches us.
10 AM it is getting quite rough at the jetty, I tell the island the last ferry will leave at 11.00AM, confirm the power house has enough fuel, & send the barge off for Shute harbor. It’s square bow is not good for pushing into the growing seas.
11.00 AM I get on the ferry, with the departing island guests, & head for Shute harbor. The weather bureau corrects its forecast, the cyclone will be over us at 7.00 PM. I arrange our courtesy bus to pick up the big boats crews families & get them to the safe house, before meeting the ferry at Shute.
We hear a call from Whitsunday Rent a Yacht. 2 of their 35 footers are to the west of North Molle Island & in trouble. They cannot make headway in the rising seas. Can anyone help?
I don’t like this. Amateur sailors, with ropes, near propellers in rough conditions is asking for disaster, but what can you do. We are the only boat near, & just a couple of miles away. The 2 amateur skippers are very competent luckily, & we have them both in tow in just 45 minutes.
That’s when we get a call from the barge, it is losing power on the starboard engine, & can’t make headway towards Shute in the now moderate seaway. I can’t help him with these yachts out back, so tell the skipper to head to Airlie Beach, it’s mostly down wind, & out of the rough stuff. He is to shove the thing up into the mangroves, drop all the anchor gear, & get home. His family were not taken to the safe house, as he should have been home.
1.00 PM we finally get into Shute Harbor after a fair battle with increasing seas. As we do, the whole bay starts smoking. Spray is rising up from the water, first at the far end of the harbor, coming to meet us as we get near the jetty. This indicates about 70 knots of wind usually, but it only lasts for a couple of minutes, & diminishes.
We get the yachts as close to their facility as possible, & get them to drop their tow. The company has their own staff to help now.
We get our thing tied up about 2.30 PM, & head for Airlie Beach, to look after our own families. Strangely it is not that bad at Airlie. In fact by 4.00 PM it is a quite nice afternoon. That smoking water was the switch to north west wind as the eye passed not too far south of us.
It is fortunate the folk of the weather bureau were many miles away from the Whitsundays. If I could have got to them just then, I might have done something very nasty to them, with the sharp end of a pineapple.
How they expect to be takes seriously with their predictions I really don’t know. Talking about 100 years, when they can’t even get a few hours right, even with the satellites, is really too much.
262
Hasbeen, I preferred that story when you used British spelling instead of American.
😉
It’s great the satellites got a mention this time, but the satellites were useful for getting wind speed and track direction well before the cyclone passed within coo-ee of any ground station. As an early warning they are very useful for that purpose. Just as you have pointed out, the problem here is in the models not the satellites. Call it chaos, call it insufficient data, call it dud physics – whatever the reason, the end result was they didn’t predict it would weaken so much by landfall.
From the station data Unmentionable shows, it was barely a cat 3 at landfall, only cat 2 based on sustained speed.
Either the BoM’s models were unreliable and actually predicted a cat 4, or else the model was very reliable and the BoM put an artificial safety margin on top of the computer prediction. None of us know the truth there. I suspect it’s just the chaos of weather as there was 26 hours between that prediction and landfall. (Twitter timestamps are shown in UTC if you are not logged in.)
I think it is a very different proposition to predict an annual world average temperature in 100 years than something very specific like the peak speed of a particular cyclone in exactly 26 hours. Methods that are appropriate for one task are not appropriate for the other. The sources of uncertainty are very different phenomena in the two cases. So even if you could do it, the ability to predict world annual climate would not imply the ability to predict a weather event so exactly.
41
Going by the ABC They are not cyclones any more, they are SOOOOPER STORMS. The latest fad from America.
90
Here is the definition of “super storm”:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/super+storm
30
SOOOOOOPER DOOOOOOPER MEGA STORMS?
50
Waah waah waah – more BoM bashing. Perhaps we should rely on Hasbeen with salty anecdotes and his sea-faring barometer instead of satellites and modelling.
Anyway the Qld election was a referendum on nasty right wingers and even nastier sceptics (as we know mostly a few over zealous ex-greens who have lapsed into silliness and angry males over 55) – the answer was well … predictable.
Waah waah waah
But disappointed I can over to read the whingey anti-analysis and it isn’t even up yet.
But clearly and unambiguously an exceptional event predicted by greenhouse theory – fewer stronger systems and southern impact zones … come on guys – sample size of one – let’s see if we can sook to 400 comments. Lucky that the new Qld Govt is reinstating the full Office of Climate Change, heaps of solar and wind turbines galore, banning coal – but maybe that’s just a rumour.
Said with all the uncanny wit and wisdom of a follower of the “love media”. One day, when you grow up, you’ll be glad you left that anonymously. – Jo
323
Absolutely brilliant! Great contribution.
40
Al17,
Hope the New Labor Government does all that and more.
The quicker the rest of Australia sees the damage they will cause to Queensland the better for the rest of the country.
60
“Spinning the cyclone” …?
90
In Brisbane it has been raining all day. The cat couldn’t go outside at all, she is fed up, and she is complaining.
Curse you, Man Made Global Warming!!!
110
Still raining. Cat thorougly pissed off. She stepped outside for a sniff of fresh air. Decided immediately that fresh air was far too wet, and came back in.
40
How to connect Cyclone Marcia to Doomsday Global Warming?
Cyclone Marcia produces a hockey stick!
via smhpeterhannam-twitter
70
Everybody made such a big deal of Marcia, Cyclone Jan was way more cool and groovy but always in the shadow of Marcia….Marcia Marcia Marcia!
60
20/12:30pm 24.4 8.6 24.4 100 0.0 NNE 115 156 62 84 985.5 985.4 55.4
20/12:00pm 24.6 8.0 24.6 100 0.0 NE 120 148 65 80 986.9 986.8 49.0
Strongest winds at Yeppoon.
I suggest that Marcia was NOT a Cat 5 except in the minds of Alarmists.
122
8 PM EST BOM downgraded Marcia to ‘Cat-1′
Look at current site data in the ‘eye-wall’:
Biloela has just gone through about the worst of the residual winds in the SW ‘eye-wall’, and the data recorded was below Cat -1.
Latest Weather Observations for Biloela
20/08:00pm 22.1 17.5 21.6 97 0.3 SSW 48 83 26 45 996.5 – 98.4 MAX SUSTAINED
20/07:50pm 21.9 17.7 21.6 98 0.2 SSW 46 87 25 47 996.1 – 96.4 MAX GUST
20/07:30pm 22.1 18.6 21.8 98 0.2 S 43 61 23 33 996.1 – 90.0
That max sustained wind level is about 15 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
That max gust wind level is about 5 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
—
Watching a Milingimbi video report on ABC24 Zombie. That recording site went through the eye-wall winds of TC LAM from about 11:00 PM to 1 AM last night. The vegetation showed typical damage consistent with a Cat-1 (seen it many times before, very familiar with it). There was zero indication of high wind speed damage. I saw zip in the report of any structural damage at all, from a claimed Cat-4! The reporter clearly has no idea what a Cat-4’s damage would even look like so no relevant questions were asked.
“Don’t send a reporter with a clue about cyclones: – CHECK!”
Latest Weather Observations for Milingimbi
19/11:00pm 24.3 19.3 22.9 92 0.9 SW 54 89 29 48 987.0 – 56.4
Strongest sustained wind on the continuous log was 54 km/h
Strongest eye-wall gust coming ashore on a continuous log is 89 km/h
Perspective on this terrifying Category-4 TC Lam:
That max sustained wind level is about 9 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
That max gust wind level is about 2 km/h below the lowest bound of a Cat-1 (Aust region)
Thus:
TC LAM’s EYE WALL WAS NOT EVEN AT CAT-1 STRENGTH AT LANDFALL – NOT EVEN A CYCLONE!
________________________
“May the Farce be with you”
132
Correction: The Milingimbi data is not continuous, there’s a 10 hour gap after 11:00 PM.
Latest Weather Observations for Milingimbi
20/09:11am 25.3 21.2 21.8 81 2.3 NW 46 72 25 39 997.4 – –
19/11:00pm 24.3 19.3 22.9 92 0.9 SW 54 89 29 48 987.0 – 56.4
60
Hi everyone
I am not an expert but the devastation by cyclone Tracy, called a 4 and the contrast to other more recent cyclones has me scratching my head. It does not make sense. Cyclone Tracy amongst other devastation reduced a foreshore stone building to rubble, twisted power poles eliminated vegetation. So have they changed the criteria?
100
I was on the first civilian plane into Darwin after Tracy (on January 1). I was sent up by my company to help with the aftermath (I was with Rentokil and rats, mosquitoes and 20,000 six day-old chicks that would not feed from stalled feeders had to be dealt with.)
I can still see street after street with nothing left standing. The telegraph poles, made from two railway lines welded to cross pieces were all flattered or at crazy angles. If any trees were left standing they were only trunks with stumps of branches left; there was not a leaf in sight. That was a Cat 4. Looks like Marcia was nothing like it.
I have a memory of standing in a line for food supplies. The guy ahead of me was wearing a hard hat with the message “Warning – Contents under pressure”.
No. Marcia was no Tracy.
90
During the hyperventilating MSM TC Marcia
coveragedrivel I notice this journalistic gem from Todays Lisa Wilkinson on twitter “Some perspective on Category 5 Cyclone Marcia about to hit QLD at 9am – Cyclone Tracy which flattened Darwin in 1974 was only a Category 4.”Only a category 4 eh Lisa? well those Territorians were so lucky I guess, it’s would appear her husbands special brand of stupid has certainly rubbed off over the years, what an insensitive twit.
80
I first saw this while watching TC Ita which made landfall north of Cairns a year ago. It made a direct hit on a BOM anemometer which I was monitoring. The windspeed registered bore no semblance to those being quoted. The meter “broke” registering 200 KPH which is low C 3. It was being presented as a killer cyclone – 4 or 5.
The only conclusion I could come to was that because the number of cyclones is low, the BOM needs to be able to say: “But the severity is much higher than it used to be. GW is real.”
I saw the eye of Marcia break up on radar between 1 and 2 PM today. The weather will continue bad, gusty and wet as long as the low pressure persists but it should be called ex TC Marcia. At the time the BOM tracking map said there was a C 3 storm directly over Rockhampton [around 2 pm] videos were being posted of relieved citizens in the streets.
112
OK, I’m a clapped out tradesman, but there are some very knowledgeable people here.
How does BOM determine central pressure and wind-speed when the system isn’t over a weather station?
I’m coming to the conclusion that wind-speed is a calculation using calculated inputs.
90
How does BOM determine central pressure and wind-speed when the system isn’t over a weather station?
Modeling!!
41
my guess… they homogenise. 😉
if this issue of Marcia, and how it was determined to be a Cat 5 is pursued – which I intend to do – we will probably end up with yet another method of ‘homogenisation’, this one based on satellite info.
132
Jennifer go for it. Please keep pursuing the BOM over the way in which the categorized TC Marcia.
TC Marcia was no worse than Aivu which touched down in Ayr in 1989.
Rockhampton has suffered worse damage in the past and ditto for Yepoon.
There is no way that we are experiencing more cyclones in cyclone season and there is no way that these cyclones are any stronger than cyclones we have had in the past.
20
All of the Hurricanes, Typhoons and Tropical Storms of the last year or two have been completely overhyped with regards to Wind Speeds compared to what actually hits land.
It is almost as if they are reading MPH for KPH, or they are using Satellite data for speeds at the Top of the storms.
124
My thoughts… http://jennifermarohasy.com/2015/02/know-cyclone-marcia-category-5-landfall/
192
Well put Jennifer. I think we can expect much of the minor structural damage that occurred is related to one or more of the following:
Dry rot
Termites
Old design
Poor construction,
Lack of structural bracing
Cracked or corroded materials and fasteners
Subsequent modification
Will it will be objectively examined in those terms? A touch doubtful.
130
I absolutely agree, Unmentionable – James Cook Uni’s damage investigation reports after Larry and Yasi are very good reading. I’m very much looking forward to their synopsis of Marcia..
30
And a preliminary report is up, pretty much outlining what is already known: (dropbox link)
10
This is frightening, in part because the news/weather media are willing to possibly exaggerate or lie and in part when people see the damage done, they will think the damage is what one should expect from a Cat 5 cyclone. If in the future a Cat 5 hits, this could be a very deadly belief.
190
Very good point. To see what a cat 5 can so, google image of Homestead Florida after hurricane Andrew in 1991. Virtually nothing left.
70
20 Feb: SMH: Luke Malpass: Surfers make most of Cyclone Marcia
PHOTO CAPTION: A surfer in Yeppoon on Friday morning. Photo: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/surfers-make-most-of-cyclone-marcia-20150220-13koh0.html
50
It was a beautiful sight from Kirra lookout.
Lines of perfect swell, with an offshore wind.
Kirra Point was shortened a few years ago, but, recently had been replaced back to original size to bring back the ‘old’ Kirra.
It worked. Kirra, hollow and fast. And you stand very close to watch.
Coolangatta -Tweed is the original Gold Coast.
It uniquely faces north and so is well-positioned to handle the cyclone-north swells.
And, Snapper Rocks is the point where east coast resumes its north-south.
Here you find the east facing Duranbah Beach, for the south and east swells that don’t curve around into Snapper.
It is a beautiful spot. A surfer’s paradise that produces world champs.
40
don’t know how my SMH piece below got posted before i finished it.
the caption for what is now pic 22 of 36 at ABC’s “Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Central Queensland towns devastated as storm tracks across state” posted earlier is:
“A surfer battles winds at Yeppoon as Tropical Cyclone Marcia begins to cross the coast. SBS World News: Stefan Armbruster.”
the VERY SAME PIC is now in a joyful Fairfax surfing story, with the caption:
“A surfer in Yeppoon on Friday morning. Photo: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News”.
(***BOM makes an incongruous, & predictably gloomy, appearance in the piece, however.)
20 Feb: SMH: Luke Malpass: Surfers make most of Cyclone Marcia
PHOTO CAPTION: A surfer in Yeppoon on Friday morning. Photo: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News
One brave soul was caught on camera surfing at Yeppoon, as it bore the brunt of Cyclone Marcia.
Further south, Gold Coast surfers made the most of king tides combined with a substantial eastern swell…
“It’s amazing,” Dan Bird said after putting his board away on Friday afternoon. “Today’s the best it’s been in a while, the wind is really good.”
***In NSW, the waves are tending towards dangerous, prompting a warning from the Bureau of Meteorology for seas north of the Hunter…
“[The waves] probably weren’t as big as everyone thought they were going to be … but still four-foot [1.2-metre] range.
“It’s not massive but still pretty solid,” she said.
The cyclone came at the right time for Veri Freitas, who is originally from Brazil and had friends arriving in town on Friday for the Quiksilver Pro, the first pro surfing tournament in Australia for 2015.
“All my friends are in town, we are doing a lot of airport runs,” she said, “It’s going to be a very, very big week.”…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/surfers-make-most-of-cyclone-marcia-20150220-13koh0.html
i had lunch at the Rainbow Bay Surf Club last Wednesday, while the Roxy Pro structures were being erected, and everyone was excitedly hoping TC Marcia would help create perfect surfing conditions for the competition.
nice pic of the surf in the SMH link, now that Fairfax has moved on from the scary cyclone stories to spruiking for the Roxy Pro!
51
oops, meant to write “while the Quicksilver Pro structures were being erected”, not the Roxy Pro.
50
Hey Pat.
Both is ok, as Quicksilver is the men’s sponsor, and Roxy is the women’s sponsor.
FWIW, work on the surf pro structures have stopped, as Cyclone Marcia has moved all the sand from the super bank, where the Surf Pro was held.
The sand bank formed as part of the tweed river mouth clearance and sand reclamation program.
They are of the opinion that the super bank will not form in time for the Surf Pro.
It seems that the ‘original’ super bank, that went from the Kirra point groyne to north Kirra, has re-formed since the re-lenghtening of the Kirra groyne, and with a good ole fashioned cyclone event, so scarce …Ye ole days are back!
Maybe the Pro will be at Kirra Point this year.
30
I put this at WUWT (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/19/cyclone-marcia-climate-crank-wishing-suffering-on-deniers/)
Eric, have not read all the comments above but Marcia was not a gigantic cyclone, just a small one a bit further south than the normal cyclones on the north east coast of Queensland and, a bit sad for the owners, damaged some poorly designed and built houses. However, stronger a more severe cyclones have occurred in the past and even further south eg the Mooloolah event which hit the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane in 1893. While all the fuss was on about Marcia, the completely separate rain depression on the South East Coast from the Tweed in NSW upto the Sunshine Coast was overlooked. This dumped lots of rain (upto 300mm from 9AM to 3PM at Caboolture Qld}on top of previous heavy falls the previous day causing local flooding (cars under water to their roof etc). It has been raining all day and now weather people expect upto 300mm tomorrow on the Gold Coast, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast from the remnants of Marcia combining with the rain depression.
The Bureau of Met (BOM) are useless at forecasting. All they can think of is the models based on increasing levels of that awful (but necessary for plant life) gas CO2 which causes droughts, floods, snow, melting ice, more rain, higher temperatures, freezing conditions, blizzards etc
(PS was on the road this afternoon through the pouring rain and just managed to get passed the area where there was water over the Bruce Hwy at Caboolture and they closed the road for a short time.)
61
It is BIG NEWS in Sweden:
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/varlden/katastrofcykloner-over-australien
We like to rescue You all when it all over.
We will send a sailingship with girls-SCA
81
You’re going to send cute women here in a sailing ship? Whoah, you guys have really changed tactics in the last 900 years.
Please send them to Brisbane and I will send them onwards to whichever part of Queensland needs their help the most. That may be a very short trip.
71
Meanwhile in North East Canada I’m shoveling another 30 cms of snow and its -17c. Our thoughts are with you.
100
Thanks sully, but, our thoughts are more with you in that terrible cold continuously shovelling snow. 😉
80
you are worried about -17C? That is warm for this time of year!! Yes I do have an anecdotal story about shovelling snow, and washing a car in -17F 🙂
20
AGW and the IPCC are basically kaput (my view)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=pachauri&=&gws_rd=ssl
71
If Pachauri goes others will step into his shoes. Kind of tells you something about his ethics though.
70
There is a hint of irony in the air, though
Pachauri is apparently claiming he is the victim of a large and elaborate conspiracy, what with his computer/phone etc being hacked and abused
Now, where is Lewanclownski with his conspiratorial ideation when we need him ? 🙂
110
ianl8888
Didn’t Craig Thompson claim that too?
70
I’d like a tutorial from Pachauri about how to go about hacking hand written notes.
60
It is interesting that now cyclones and tornados and other severe weather is hyped everywhere. In the late 70’s, a tornado hit the town I was living in. I watched the funnel come down, we drove around and looked at the damage. Yet there was a complete reluctance on the part of the weather persons to actually call this a tornado. The “official” designation was thunderstorm with high winds, I believe. Back then, towns considered being hit by tornados a bad thing. Today, I’m sure it would be at least an F2 or F3, even if it wasn’t. Times change.
Also, I am curious if straight-line 100 mph (160 kph) are less damaging than cyclones or tornados. It’s not uncommon for parts of Wyoming to have 100 mph wind gusts and very high sustained wind speeds. I suppose everything that cannot withstand such wind has already blown away. There’s rarely heavy rain with the straight-line wind, but it does happen.
60
” I am curious if straight-line 100 mph (160 kph) are less damaging than cyclones or tornados”
Cyclones often contain vortices of localised higher intensity winds, also rapid high-low-high fluctuations that cause fatigue like bending a fork until it breaks. Post-cyclone inspections throw up oddities, such as one where a fully rated 2 storey building was trashed, while 100m down the road was a shack, held together with coat-hanger wire and bailing twine, completely undamaged.
30
Kind of like tornados that bend trees over but don’t break the tree, drive straw into trees and other weird things.
I found this “People living in mobile homes are especially at risk from injury and death. Even anchored mobile homes can be seriously damaged when winds gust over 80 mph.” on the National Severe Storms Labratory page. I have not seen an anchored trailer blow over, but unanchored ones and tractor-trailer rigs also blow over routinely. I think it is the difference in the types of damage seen that helps differentiate between straightline and tornado winds.
30
when living in Ohio a mini tornado touched down. My son was at school and they had a “drill”. I was driving to the medical section at Wright Patterson Air Force base when the tornado touched down. The damage was one tree that had been uprooted.
A few years previously there was a devastating tornado that touched down in Xenia. As a result of the devastation, Fairborn was well prepared for anything that might happen.
Once again, there is a tornado season and the mid-west gets severely hit. On the other hand it was a surprise to me to learn that tornados also hit Conneticut and when I visited Hartford I learned all about the tornado that had hit that city.
Even Australia has tornados. I have Sydney friends who have actually seen those tornados and there is a small portion of Castle Hill that is known as tornado alley. When I lived there, I do remember the times that there were strong winds, and trees were uprooted in a particular street that was close to where we lived.
So far there has been nothing unusual about the tornadoes in the USA, but I am wondering about the prevalence of tornadoes in Australia.
20
So they hype Cyclone Marcia but virtually ignore what has been going on in the Northern Hemisphere. Typical.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/blizzards-sweep-across-middle-east-blanketing-jerusalems-dome-of-the-rock-with-snow-20150220-13kwq8.html
61
As i have been saying, GDACS never had Marcia-15 past CAT 3 http://www.gdacs.org/Cyclones/report.aspx?eventid=1000145&episodeid=6&eventtype=TC
Event time line
The storm evolution is shown in the table below.
Advisory Alert color Date (UTC) Category Wind speed
by cyclone winds (>120km/h) Location (lon, lat)
1
green
2/18/2015 Tropical storm 64 km/h (40 mph) km/h ( mph)
2
green
2/18/2015 12:00:00 PM Tropical storm 74 km/h (46 mph) km/h ( mph)
3
green
2/19/2015 Tropical storm 93 km/h (58 mph) km/h ( mph)
4
green
2/19/2015 6:00:00 AM Category 2 167 km/h (104 mph) km/h ( mph)
5
green
2/19/2015 6:00:00 PM Category 3 204 km/h (127 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/20/2015 6:00:00 AM Category 1 138 km/h (86 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/20/2015 6:00:00 PM Tropical storm 101 km/h (63 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/21/2015 6:00:00 AM Tropical storm 64 km/h (40 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/21/2015 6:00:00 PM Tropical depression 56 km/h (35 mph) km/h ( mph)
6
green
2/22/2015 6:00:00 AM Tropical depression 56 km/h (35 mph) km/h ( mph)
90
Just listen to Triple M radio station, The Grill Team, they’re still referring to CT Marcia as Cat-5 cyclone. It never was.
91
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cyclone-marcia-climate-change-is-expanding-the-tropics-20150220-13kdfi.html
This article from the SMH suggests cyclones will move further south in the future.
Pity they don’t read their own archives as this article is about 61 years late. Northern NSW was subject to records floods in 1954 because of cyclone activity.
This is from the Herald in 1954:
The Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday 23 February 1954
Herald” Appeal
To Aid
Flood Victims
“The Sydney Morning Herald to-day launches a public appeal for funds to aid the victims of the floods.
Already it is known that at least 22persons have lost their lives on the north coast.
Reports of what has happened in the worst-hit centres-Lismore, Casino, Kyogle, and Murwillumbah – are scanty, but it is certain that there has been great devastation.
Several thousand people at least have lost their homes. Human distress is deep and widespread.
Total losses may be even higher than those in the calamitous floods of 1949 and 1950.
In response to an appeal by the “Herald” in1950, the people of N.S.W. gave £116,549/9/10.
Leading Sydney citizens yesterday commended the 1954 “Herald” appeal to the public.
The Lord Mayor, Alderman P. D. Hills, said last night:
“I commend this appeal to the people of Sydney and ask that they remember these people in distress
“The needs of the far north coast must be desperate and urgent.
“Many of these poor people were congratulating themselves a week or 10 days ago when rain fell during the Queen’s visit and broke the prolonged drought.
“Now they have gone from one terrible extreme to another disaster.
“I hope the people of Sydney will support this appeal.”
Sir Charles Lloyd Tones summed up the response of others:
“The fund is something I believe every citizen should support.”
Subscribers should send their donations, made payable to “‘Sydney Morning Herald’ Public Appeals Fund,” to the fund, Box 4969, G.P.O., Sydney.
Donations will be acknowledged in the “Herald.”The Deputy Commissioner of Taxation, Mr. J.W. R. Hughes, said last night that the donations to the fund would be deductible allowance.
This is from the Cairns post (Trove)
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/42810699
It seems climate change is occurring, it is changing back to what it used to be as floods in February/March were a common event then. I know I lived through them.
70
Demonstrates a very poor understanding of the environment by an environment reporter. The Tropic Zone is defined by the geometry of the tropic lines, which are set by the angle of the Earth’s rotational axis to the plane of the ecliptic.
Hannah is suggesting the tilt of that axis is steadily increasing such that between 750 and 1500 years from the present the entire planet will be tropical.
31
From the Bom own website.
1 February 1893 This tropical cyclone crossed the coast near Yeppoon, smashing buildings and uprooting trees. The barometer dropped to 969 hPa when the tropical cyclone passed over the Buninyong which was seeking shelter near the Northumberland Island Group. The 225 ton steamer Dickey was wrecked on Dickey Beach Caloundra. The tropical cyclone moved south with Crohamhurst (on Stanley River) recording 907 mm of rain in 24 hours to 9 am on the 3rd Feb. A 15.2 m high wall of water was observed roaring down a Stanley River gorge. More than 150 houses were washed down the Brisbane River. Indooroopilly Railway Bridge and the Victoria Bridge were both washed away. Flood height reached 9.25 m on Port Office Gauge. 7 men drowned in an Ipswich Colliery. 4 children drowned on the 3rd and a policeman drowned in a rescue attempt. On the 4th a man drowned after rescuing his father at South Brisbane. On the 6th a man was found drowned at O’Connell Terrace, a boy drowned at Petrie Terrace, a man was drowned at Rosalie and 2 men were drowned when a punt capsized at West End. On the 7th 2 men were found drowned at the Valley and Bowen Bridge and 3 men were lost when a boat capsized in the Brisbane River. At Maryborough 2 men were drowned and a family missing, believed drowned while trying to cross the river. Unprecedented flooding occurred at Maryborough where the Mary River Bridge washed away. The river peaked at Maryborough at 4 pm on the 5th with more than one hundred and 130 families homeless after their homes were swept away. Numerous houses were also washed away at Gympie leaving a large number of families homeless. There were other deaths in outlying areas.
30
Yes,I mentioned the 1893 cyclone in my comment 32 above. Thanks for the extended explanation.
BOM seem to ignore their own recorded history.
Let us hope that a repeat of the Federation drought holds off for a while to allow more building of dams and the demise of CO2 alarmism.
41
And another at Coolangatta
20 February 1954 This tropical cyclone crossed the coast at Coolangatta with a recorded pressure reading of 973 hPa. Some reports from the Coolangatta/Tweed Heads area had pressure readings to 962 hPa. The worst damage in that area occurred around Cudgen in New South Wales where some houses were blown apart and trees more than 1 m in diameter were twisted out of the ground. A record pressure reading of 982.7 hPa was recorded at Brisbane. Widespread structural damage occurred along the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and around Brisbane. A 0.64 m storm surge was recorded on the Moreton Bay tide gauge, however conditions were much worse on the foreshore with boats in the tree tops at Beachmere. Waves at Kirra brought 2 m of water onto the highway, picking up cars. 900 mm of rain was recorded at Springbrook in the 24 hour period up to landfall. Floods, combined with storm surge on the Nerang River caused the evacuation of several families and a dramatic rescue of people from Macintosh Island. The floods and cyclone then hit the Lismore district, with gales whipping up large waves on the then 11.3 km wide Richmond River. 26 people tragically died from these unprecedented effects.
60
Hi Jo,
Is it possible for one of your contributors or a group of them with meteorological quals to write an article referencing these numbers. It could be titled “The BOM Who Cried Wolf.” It is not just a matter of overhyping; the real risk lies in the attitudes of people who face a REAL Cat 5 cyclone at some future date.
172
Cyclone Marcia was a CAT 2, 70km wide and people were surfing and swimming in the ocean
YASI was a CAT 4-5 over 600 km wide and caused billions of $ damage
Marcia was tiny and the monsoons brought and are still bringing most of the rain
ALL our CAT 5 cyclones flattened everything in their path, including Darwin, they also damage the Barrier Reef while greenies are asleep
92
It’s not the overall size of the storm but the pressure gradient which determines how bad a cyclone is. Small ones are often more vicious. Having said that, I agree Marcia was ridiculously overhyped.
70
Thanks, SR, I have so many reports on the centre pressure, from 922hp and a bit less to 1004hp for the same time.
Most of the speeds in the media, 180k/h, 280p/h, and over 300 k/h were all estimations and not readings from an official gauge. It was all over hyped, as, bigger than YASI which was the biggest I had ever seen in Qld, how absurd, YASI was a monster, yet still ½ the size of the world record Typhoon TIP.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-198.96,-30.43,2996
As you can see here, the Monsoons are bringing most of the rain just as they did in the 2011 Brisbane ‘dam’ flood
20
I have been checking out some of the images of damage. The roller doors don’t count, as any that are a few years old can be expected to come to bits in a moderate blow. There’s a new Australian Standard for these (a bit overdue …)
There are one or two severely damaged structures that don’t show any sign of having had cyclone rods, steel strapping, nail plates, or bracing walls. There are roof frames stripped of sheeting, and what’s left shows no sign of having had diagonal bracing. Looks like some places are overdue for an audit. Hopefully, there will be a damage report by ABCB and JCU CTS (or similar), including “windicator” studies eg failed and non-failed road signs, to (very accurately) supplement available anemometer data.
The foolish hyping by BoM and the media creates a real risk.
My solution (when I get the chance) is to get people to read JCU CTS Technical Study 51 (Larry) and 57 (Yasi). Even if they don’t read them, looking at the images helps a bit.
60
Some years ago I was involved with the Happy Bay resort on Long Island, in the Whitsundays.
At one stage we were demolishing a few old weatherboard guest cabins, & a couple of shower blocks & laundries. These were 25 to 35 years old, no where near as old as many homes along the waterfront in many places like Yeppoon.
The nails were so wasted in the air gap between the weatherboards & the frame, it was totally impossible to pull any out. They simply snapped at even mild application of pressure with a claw hammer.
We discussed being pleased the new bar was cement block construction, as we doubted any of the old guest units could stand even a mild cyclone, by the look of those nails.
It appeared to us it was only really memory that was holding many of those cabins together. Many Queensland coastal communities have old weekenders which were less well built than those units still in use as housing. Little wonder they blow apart.
50
Wind gusts of a Cat 2 will also damage frail infrastructure and fall some trees. I see no reason to believe Marcia was a Cat 5, nor Cat 4. Marcia did not have the howling wind of a Cat 4 nor Cat 5. People do not go surfing during the crossing of a Cat 5. Cat 5’s normally flatten everything in their path as they did in Darwin and Nth Qld
50
JCU CTS Report is out already – see below
30
Cyclone Tracey that flattened Darwin on Christmas 1974 was a Cat 4 – max gusts of 240km/h. It was also small in size – like Marcia. The radius of destructive winds was only 50km. There have been many more powerful storms cross Australia’s shores but they usually miss highly populated areas. But Tracey’s eye passed right over Darwin’s CBD – a direct hit. Also most Darwin houses in 1974 were built on stilts to aid cooling in the tropical climate. Unfortunately it was this type of construction that is most vulnerable to strong winds and explains the near complete destruction of the city. After Cyclone Tracey building standards were changed. So a similar event today would not create the same level of damage.
But I hate to think what the MSM hype would be if a Tracey type storm struck Darwin again.
50
I read in some places that Tracy was a Cat 4 and in other places Tracy was a Cat 5. The damage looks like a Cat 5 but could also be that of a Cat 4
50
handtjive –
thanx for the info. i oops-ed re Quicksilver simply to match Malpass’s reference to it in the article, for those not familiar with surfing comps. Roxy/Stephanie Gilmore
were naturally of greater interest in the Surf Club last Wednesday.
not surprised by your other info, as the sand bank was being discussed, as was the possibility of moving to kirra pt. the big structure in front of the surf club seemed ridiculous anyway, given the weather systems about the place, plus it blocked the view from the club, which wasn’t going down well with patrons.
cementafriend says –
“While all the fuss was on about Marcia, the completely separate rain depression on the South East Coast from the Tweed in NSW upto the Sunshine Coast was overlooked”
true, because the MSM keeps referring to TC Marcia in relation to the tropical low depression affecting the Sunshine Coast, etc.
hope someone here can outline the different systems in a clear manner.
50
You are all barking up the wrong tree!!
Follow this link to find out just how real global warming and threats to the environment are:-
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3RnAsCrzq
Don’t say you were not warned, just pay your taxes and be grateful.
Please feel free to advise the MSM, ABC, channels #7, #9, #10 as well as Foxtel who seem not to know about statements like this one from the UN / IPCC
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If the bommies (bureau commies) where doing what they are paid to do (and the Abbott government is too scared to force them to do) rather than pursuing an ideological agenda, they might consider conducting research into why it is that cyclones will (in some seasons) not track inland to areas that are subject to drought. Just look at Marcia’s track. It appears to have moved directly down the trough that runs through Queensland. I recall that during the height of the
global warmingel nino drought there were very few cyclones. One of the few that did form, a very weak one, started life off the east coast of Far North Queensland, from where it tracked across the cape and, astoundingly, across the gulf and into Arnhem Land, where it dissipated. I cannot recall a cyclone having following that path before.You would suppose that a (low pressure) cyclone would be drawn to a high pressure areas, so, naturally, they will tend to track south. So I guess it makes sense that a cyclone would not be drawn towards central Australia, where it is hot and dry and the air pressure is therefore at its lowest. This would seem to suggest that a drought can be broken only by a la nina or some major weather event in the Indian Ocean that travels right across the continent.
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I was in Darwin days after Tracy, Innisfail days after Larry and have inspected damage following other Cyclones and severe storms throughout Australia. One report yesterday suggested that winds exceeded 300kph when the TC reached Yeppoon. Every pole would have been flattened. There was actually a lack of such damage after Yasi which suggests that although heavy rains caused considerable heartache the winds never reached velocities suggested. The media and BOM really need to report facts in regard to possible natural disasters as we are generally under the impression that exaggeration is the present norm.
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If we has 1/10th the mainstream media in this country the reporting would probably become ten times as good as it is, and about that more accurate. At the moment the idea of mass media ‘competition’ from many ‘sources’, to better service the ‘public interest’, is delivered in the form of who can formulate and push-out the biggest most fabulous BS story from their bowels to the most people in the shortest time.
Accuracy and truth? … pphhhhhahhahahahaaa! … … wrong universe.
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worth noting:
21 Feb: Sunshine Coast Daily: Coast’s dams are brimming thanks to heavy rainfall
FOUR of the Sunshine Coast’s seven major dams were overflowing this morning, well ahead of the worst of the downpours expected from Cyclone Marcia.
Borumba, Ewen Maddock, Lake McDonald and Wappa dams had exceeded capacity, the over-spill adding to downstream flooding.
SEQWater reported that all of the flood storage capacity of Somerset and Wivenhoe dams behind Brisbane was still available.
Wivenhoe had 100% of its 1,967,000 megalitre flood storage available and Somerset 99% of its 721,000ML.
On the Sunshine Coast, Baroon Pocket Dam in the Blackall Ranges was holding 41,310 megalitres or 67.7% of capacity, Borumba 46,240ML (100.6%), Cooloolabin, in the north, 7526 ML (54.4%), Landsborough’s Ewen Maddock 18,983ML (114.4%), Noosa’s Lake Macdonald 8534ML (106.4%), Poona 615ML (94%) and Wappa Dam 5353ML (114%).
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We have been getting calls, emails and text messages from down south and from friends overseas asking how we are coping, are we safe, do we still have power and do we have enough drinking water and canned food to get us over the worst. Can I just get the message out there to all our friends and relatives that we will be OK. We survived the last Labor Government and expect to survive this one too.
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Graham Creed (ABC weatherman) thought the two cyclones hitting the continent was in tandem is ‘unusual’. The inference being that the waters are warming, producing more severe cyclones, although he didn’t actually state it.
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Note the origin of cyclone Lam, (and cyclone Marcia.) The volcanically active Indonesian Archipelago.
Extract from ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ Alex S. Gaddes 1990. pp 73 – 78
“Deep Low Pressure Systems
“It is also known (see Ref. No 14a) that the stratosphere superimposes the above reactions on the troposphere (the ‘trickle down’ effect,) so that those volcano-induced stratospheric vortices turn into Tropospheric deep low pressure systems which I suspect to be the genesis of the rather frequent, rain-bearing cloud masses, which have been feeding in from the north-west over the past year.
No Accident
“I’m of the opinion that it will be shown to be not just an accident, that the weatherman’s ‘upper atmospheric disturbance’ happens to be associated with a rain-bearing depression, or ‘deep low pressure system’ and that frequently, the cause might well turn out to be an exploding volcano.”
I have already mentioned Galunggung and its effect on our weather in 1983. It is significant that Galunggung is one of the nine volcanoes listed on the maps, that are still active.
I am convinced that funds ought to be channeled into the study of the sudden outbreak of explosive volcanism in the Indonesian Archipelago and its potential to influence the weather in Eastern Australia. There is no doubt in my mind that, had such a program been established, the recent flood disaster could have been averted…….”
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so it was “data compiled by the Space Science and Engineering Centre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US” that decided TC Marcia was a Cat 5 cyclone!
20 Feb: SMH: Peter Hannam: Cyclone Marcia: How storm took forecasters by surprise
VIDEO 2 mins Cyclone Marcia: the science behind storm
Extreme natural events expert Prof. Jonathan Nott (Geoscience expert at James Cook Uni) explains what is normal and what is unusual about the ferocious weather lashing Australia’s north east.
Cyclone Marcia is one super storm that caught Bureau of Meteorology forecasters by surprise.
Up until about mid-afternoon on Thursday, meteorologists were watching the storm tracking at category 1 strength, with sustained winds of just over 100km/h.
Then, about 4pm, forecasters watched as the cyclone started to slow and its projected intensity soared.
According to data compiled by the Space Science and Engineering Centre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, the projected wind speed for Marcia jumped to as much as 230km/h, well into the category 5 range.
The bureau estimates the storm crossed the coast at category 5 strength on Friday morning…
Kevin Walsh, a tropical cyclone expert at the University of Melbourne, said it was a slowdown in Marcia’s march towards the coastline that triggered the rise in intensity…
In Marcia’s case, favourable upper air conditions allowed the storm to speed up its rotation, drawing up more air “like smoke rising in a smokestack”, one meteorologist said…
Rob Webb, regional director of the bureau in Queensland, said the rate of Marcia’s strengthening was “remarkable” but added “it’s too early to pinpoint exactly why”…
Sea-surface temperatures off eastern Australia have been unusually warm, particularly off the NSW coast, with temperatures as much 2-3 degrees above average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Such rapid jumps in intensity have been observed elsewhere, such as in the north-west Pacific, Professor Walsh said.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/cyclone-marcia-how-storm-took-forecasters-by-surprise-20150220-13k57v.html
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21 Feb: ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Gympie businesses begin to flood with water from Mary River
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk visited central Queensland to inspect the damage from ex-cyclone Marcia.
She met Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow on Saturday afternoon and spoke to emergency service workers at the disaster coordination centre.
Ms Palaszczuk promised to send the Army to help communities to rebuild.
***”What we are seeing here is complete and utter devastation – it has been absolutely horrific what these people have gone through,” she said.
“If you look at the devastation, people have lost roofs, they’ve lost possessions, but they haven’t lost their hope.”…
Ms Palaszczuk said Queensland had pulled through relatively well and all effort would be put into the clean-up…
“I know they’ve been through a harrowing ordeal. We’re very lucky, we’re very fortunate, we’ve had no reports of serious injuries.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-21/major-flood-warning-for-gympies-mary-river-after-cyclone-marcia/6167676
it took til the final line for ABC to include the Premier’s line about being lucky & fortunate with no serious injuries – but no apology for her wrong & unwarranted prediction Queenslanders would face a “harrowing and terrifying” ordeal. alright, she’s still clinging to “harrowing”.
instead of any criticism over the wrong prediction, tho, the MSM found a human interest story they could claim went viral (is there anything they love more?):
Cyclone Marcia: Social media makes a star of ‘The Sign Guy’
Brisbane Times – 10 hours ago
The Premier’s sign language expert Mark Cave…
Why a ‘poetic’ sign language interpreter went viral in Australia
BBC News – 20 hours ago
An Australian sign language interpreter has become a Twitter sensation…
#SignGuy steals the show as he delivers an animated storm warning
Yahoo News – 19 hours ago
Cyclone Marcia ‘Sign Guy’ reveals what it’s like to be an interpreter
Courier Mail – 6 hours ago
Through his work, the Sign Guy was able to interpret Barack Obama’s UQ Speech at the G20 last year, which he said was a really good experience…
meanwhile, all MSM reports of rain in SE Qld are still being directly or indirectly connected to Marcia.
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See any particular trend in tropical cyclones hitting Onslow the TC capital of Australia?
Suck it up Holocausters!
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” Reports are coming in that the BOM and ABC are spinning the Queensland cyclone. ”
Nice One !
That one is almost worthy of the Two Ronnies
” News reports are coming in that two tankers have collided in the English Channel. One ship was believed to be carrying a cargo of blue paint, the other red.
First reports say that all the sailors aboard both vessels have been marooned “
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What if the other one had been yellow ?
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What do you call a boatload of Greens?
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I don’t know. What do you call a boatload of Greens ?
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A “puke”?
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Вы хотите ледокол
(Do you want Icebreaker)
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What’s a favourite icebreaker for UNSW parties ?
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Reposting my comment on WUWT:
Never mind what Turton said. Here are the people I trust to get it right:
https://www.jcu.edu.au/cts/
The url for the Rapid Assessment Report (PDF) is a bit big so here’s a TinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/lpjt6sm
You won’t find much in the way of full-on contradiction as these people need to watch their backs, but on page 13 it says “The winds recorded during Marcia were below the design wind speed”.
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Excellent work. Talk about rapid response. Why listen to drivel from so-called climate scientists when there are engineers like these around?
Another quote:
“A community that receives an over-represented wind speed report may have potential for complacency in preparation or building standards in the future.”
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See my comment 28.2. It’s nice someone else recognizes this danger.
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Part of my job Sheri …
“why not go another 150mm higher? The steel posts won’t cost any more” (flood risk)
or
“Don’t risk it – go the next level up. It’s only about $200 extra in plates and bolts.” (cyclone risk)
Trouble is, half-witted comment by climate alarmists makes the problem more difficult, because people end up thinking there is no point.
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Hey guys, has the BOM redefined cyclone categories? Cat 5 cyclones used to flatten everything – literally. We were evacuated as kids and with good reason. Cyclone Marcia was just like any of a dozen storms over Queensland this summer. Actually there was an afternoon storm in late January that very easily trumped the severity of this cyclone.
Tom (Ayr born and bred)
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Jo,
this is key data, as resolution of the actual temperature record through 1880-1910 will be able to determine if the BOM’s secret temperature adjustment programs are grounded in science, or just green politics.
On the basis the BOM contains committed radical greens right up to high levels, and that these people are prepared to lie and breach rules ‘for the cause’, then it is likely that any relevant records held in BOM archives, where they probably should be, have been erased or disappeared. I am convinced the only way this can be resolved in the face of such committed fanatics is by several persistent FOI requests. Anything else will be batted away.
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on 4BC (from 3AW) talk show last nite:
couple of callers commented on how far south this cyclone went and how that made it UNUSUAL.
does anyone know how far south it did affect? friends/family on the Sunshine Coast didn’t think it had affected them as late as saturday am, as their drenching came from the tropical low.
then there was a caller from Melbourne, who told the host TC Marcia had affected Melbourne, not in the part he was, but in another part which received 18 mls of rain saturday!
another caller, from South Africa, on a different topic. ends by mentioning he has a daughter on the Gold Coast. the host gets excited. if she’s on the Gold Coast, she’s just been through the most torrential rain ever.
the caller says: i spoke to her Saturday & she said it was all a bit ordinary. that shut the host up.
BTW LISTENING TO BBC WORLD SERVICE THE PAST COUPLE OF NIGHTS, I WAS SURPRISED THEY DID NOT HAVE A SINGLE MENTION OF TC MARCIA ON THEIR NEWS BULLETINS. NOW THAT IS UNUSUAL.
there is no doubt MSM were all over the Qld Coast, desperate to get sensational footage/pics of utter devastation, and i don’t want to hear excuses that it was so ferocious they had to take shelter. as with so many previous weather events, here’s a French reporter recently:
Watch: French TV reporter hit by huge wave (Brittany Coast)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3HLrCJ9Z5o
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“grazed” in the two articles below seems more like an excuse for why no Cat 5 landed anywhere but the sparsely populated Shoalwater Bay, owned by the Australian Defence Force. In 2005 the federal government entered into a long-term agreement with the US over the use of Shoalwater Bay for military training purposes (Wikipedia). given Uni of Wisconsin-Madison in the US declared Marcia a Cat 5, who knows what it actually was when it made landfall there? very convenient.
21 Feb: The Australian: Cyclone Marcia, Cyclone Lam hit Queensland, NT: live updates
The gale-force winds and torrential rain ensured it was terrifying but in the end many were counting their lucky stars Marcia crossed the coast at the largely uninhabited Shoalwater Bay before gradually losing intensity.
“It’s just a big plot of land essentially with not much there,” Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Jess Carey told AAP.
Marcia was a category four storm when it “grazed” Yeppoon on Friday morning but was downgraded to category three about 1pm as it hit Rockhampton…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/cyclone-marcia-cyclone-lam-hit-queensland-nt-live-updates/story-e6frg6nf-1227227798977
today’s Gold Coast Bulletin story – “Cyclone Marcia: Gold Coast to cop a drenching as Marcia moves into south east Queensland” – begins with:
UPDATE: EX-tropical cyclone Marcia has moved out to sea, sparing the Gold Coast from predicted heavy rainfall:
21 Feb: Channel 9: ‘Destructive winds’ set to batter Gold Coast as former cyclone Marcia moves south
Gold Coast residents are bracing for severe thunderstorms and destructive winds as the fallout from ex-tropical Cyclone Marcia continues…
Yeppoon did not feel the full force of the system, then a category 5, as the storm only “grazed” the town, Ms Palaszczuk said…
***The Insurance Council of Australia has now declared the cyclone a “catastrophe” meaning all cyclone-related claims will be expedited…
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/02/19/12/40/tropical-cyclone-marcia-upgraded-to-category-two-as-queensland-braces-for-wild-weather
it’s been fine all day, with five minutes of fine drizzle mid-morning, where i am, halfway between brisbane and gold coast, and i don’t think it’s rained in brisbane either. surely Marcia didn’t affect SW Qld. can anyone provide date to show it did?
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???
22 Feb: Brisbane Times: Cyclone Marcia: Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk backs Bureau of Meteorology after Marcia surprise
by Cameron Atfield, Brisbane Times and Sun-Herald journalist
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended the Bureau of Meteorolgy’s forecasting after the rapid escalation of Tropical Cyclone Marcia caught most by surprise.
***TC Marcia had been forecast to be a Category 1 or 2 as it approached the Queensland coast but quickly gained power and was a Category 5 – the most powerful classification – when it crossed the coast near Shoalwater Bay…
“This is something that they have never seen before as well, going from a low pressure system to a (Category) 1 all the way up to a 5,” she said in Yeppoon on Saturday afternoon.
“They’d never seen this in their lifetime, so this was a rare event.
“Now, they’re going to go back and look through all the research and try to work out how that happened so quickly…
***Localised flooding was reported across south-east Queensland, but Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the city was fortunate to have missed out on the forecast 120km/h winds…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cyclone-marcia-premier-annastacia-palaszczuk-backs-bureau-of-meteorology-after-marcia-surprise-20150221-13l730.html
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Uni of Wisconsin-Madison: Space Science & Engineering Centre – About Us
(scroll down) Associated Organizations
(LINK)National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NOAA Satellite & Information Service, NESDIS)
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/overview/
20 Feb: Eureka Alert: NASA-JAXA’s TRMM satellite sees rapid intensification of category-5 Marcia
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
At 11 p.m. local time (1324 UTC) on Feb. 19, 2015, the Precipitation Radar on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite observed the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Maria in the Coral Sea. At that time, Marcia was rapidly intensifying to category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, a little more than 12 hours before an expected landfall in Queensland, Australia.
The TRMM satellite is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency…
In this case, the heavy precipitation (the red volume of the image) near the ocean surface is the powerful base of a hot tower in the southwest quadrant of the eyewall.
A “hot tower” is a rain cloud that reaches at least to the top of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. It extends approximately nine miles (14.5 km) high in the tropics. These towers are called “hot” because they rise to such altitude due to the large amount of latent heat. Water vapor releases this latent heat as it condenses into liquid. NASA research found that a tropical cyclone with a hot tower in its eyewall was twice as likely to intensify within the next six hours, than a cyclone that lacked a tower…
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/nsfc-nts022015.php
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So what was the final outcome? All those on this site with experience of Cat 4 or Cat 5 cyclones (me included, re Tracy) say that the damage, what little there was, would indicate that this was not a Cat 5. This seems to be supported by the recorded wind speeds detailed in previous posts (12, 22 and 23).
The media seem to have gone awfully quiet on it today, so it seems to be a non event. Does anybody know what the highest RECORDED (not estimated) wind speed was?
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PeterPetrum – see BoM’s Observations page here.
Readings below are continuous wind speed / gust speed = BoM Cyclone Category. Wind speeds in kilometres per hour, stations listed in rough order from north to south.
Creal Reef: data doesn’t go back far enough, highest still in the table is 91 / 109 = Cat 2 (sustained) or below cyclone strength (gusts).
Middle Percy Island: 156 / 200 = Solid Cat 3
Williamson: 61 / 96 = below cyclone strength
Samuel Hill: 98 / 170 = Cat 2 (sustained winds) or Cat 3 (gusts) [showed SW-NW winds for the duration, something was broken as they should have been easterlies]
Yeppoon: 120 / 156 = Cat 3 (sustained winds) or Cat 2 (gusts)
Rockhampton: 82 / 113 = Cat 1 (sustained winds) or below cyclone strength (gusts)
Gladstone: 59 / 83 = below cyclone strength
Gladstone Airport: 50 / 80 = below cyclone strength
Bundaberg: 50 / 70 = below cyclone strength
Gayndah: 32 / 52 = well below cyclone strength
So actual readings show a borderline Cat 2-3 in Yeppoon and a marginal Cat 1 in Rocky (which, as we know, went through the eye). I understand gusts may have been recorded to around 170-180kph in Yeppoon by non-BoM equipment, which is low to mid Cat 3 but still underwhelming.
I’m on the coast near Bundaberg and it wasn’t as nasty here as ex-Oswald was in 2013. It woke me briefly at 3am, but I’m the only one that I’ve talked to who did wake to it. Just another storm here (thankfully!)
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Ithe Saffir-Simpson Scale depends on wind speed measurement. The TRMM satellite measures rainfall intensity which is not a suitable proxy for wind speed. The suggestion is that the Category 5 intensity was not determined by wind speed measurement but by some subjective process involving TRMM imaging.
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PeterPetrum & Leo G –
please keep following this up. it would seem a gigantic hoax has been perpetrated on the public.
who will believe BOM/officials if/when a real Cat 5 cyclone forms.
note info from “redress” in the comments above.
i am hoping those with the expertise will focus on this NASA explanation for changing the cat to 5.
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JCU have put out a preliminary report.(Link below) Basically just rehashing what the BoM was saying but the evidence from footage I have seen is pretty clear that this wasn’t a Cat 5 it more than likely wasn’t even a Cat 4 going by reported wind speeds it barely made Cat 1 in some areas. The damage being shown is due in no small part to the age of some of the buildings and the lack of enforcement of cyclone rated building standards in others.
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There are currently eleven erupting volcanoes producing ‘albedo’ over Indonesia – and thus, Cyclones Lam and Marcia. (see post #52)
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