Brisbane - 2nd February 2011
I write this from beautiful, serene, clean Brisbane. A more stark contrast to Chennai would be hard to find. Since we landed late on Sunday night we've been enjoying a gleeful culture shock.
"The roads are so quiet!"
"Look! Pavements!"
"I haven't heard a car horn since we landed."
"Where's the litter?"
"Can we live here?"
You know the sort of thing.
We are being spoiled enormously by our great friends Berners & Leona, and loving spending time with my Godson Ewan and 'new' baby Cara (who's actually 1 year old now!).
But as you probably know, we've landed in the build up to a major news event. Just weeks after Brisbane suffered its worst flooding in living memory, the Queensland coast further north is about to get battered by Yasi, now officially the biggest tropical cyclone to hit Australia since records began.
So I thought I'd just give you a little insight into what life is like in a world sandwiched between massive and profound weather events. Yasi has been a news item since before we got here. While a smaller cyclone, Anthony, was having its fun on the Queensland coast last week I watched a BBC weather report in Chennai talking, albeit briefly, about a 'major cyclone forming near Fiji'. As it grew, fuelled by the warm Pacific ocean, it travelled west, and by the beginning of this week Australian forecasters were reporting the threat of a category 4 cyclone hitting Queensland.
The number 4 is from the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Being the very clever reader you are, you probably already knew that cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are the same thing. They just have different names depending on where in the world they happen. Mexico's hurricane is Japan's typhoon, while on the Indian Ocean and South Pacific it's the cyclone that's feared.
4. Not even half of 10. Sounds fairly innocuous. After all, our trusty old Beaufort Scale goes up to 12. If British sailors tune in to the shipping forecast to hear they're facing wind force 4 on Tyne, Dogger or Cromarty, they know that's a 'moderate breeze'.
Thing is, when they created their scale in 1971, structural engineer Herbert Saffir and his meteorologist mate Bob Simpson thought 12 was way too many categories. Even 10 seemed extravagant. Below, is the simple,and slightly scary, Saffir-Simpson scale.
You now see why a 'cat. four' as it was being referred to was very quickly Australia's top story.
This morning we woke to the news that Yasi is now category 5. Those in its path may not want to see Saffir and Simpson's 'damage' description for such a thing.
It's size and force has got newscasters wearing earnest frowns, meteorologists reaching for record books and politicians doing almost round the clock press conferences updating people on the threat to property, land, and of course, life.
A cyclone's path cannot be predicted, they are as likely to turn a hairpin as to go straight on, but as I write this everything is looking like Yasi will hit the coast just south of Cairns. Remarkably, here in Brisbane, all we're expecting to get is some rain off the fringes, but don't let that fool you into thinking Yasi is a 'localised' threat. Australia is very big, and Cairns is 12 hours drive north from here.
The best illustration of Yasi's magnitude is this comparison in the Herald Sun newspaper showing how its size compares to the United States and Europe.
If you look closely at the Europe comparison, you can just make out Birmingham to the north east of the eye.
The eye of this cyclone is an estimated 100 kilometres across. That's just the eye, the dormant peaceful lull at the centre of the carnage. Forecasters predict it will take an hour for the eye to pass over those in its path. This remarkable phenomenon, the peaceful calm that is so often the cause for false hope, usually lasts just moments, a few minutes perhaps. The fact that some people will suffer 6 hours of 170 mph winds, then an hour of calm, knowing they've got another 6 hours still to bear is just incredible.
These facts and figures are alarming from a distance, but what must it be like for those thousands of people from Mackay up to Townsville and as far as Cairns who are preparing for tonight? Berners and Leona's parents are both up near Cairns and have been, along with a flurry of calls from friends throughout today, on the phone reassuring that they are fully prepped and braced for the worst. The advice from the authorities was initially to leave the coastal towns in its path, but from about midday today they advised it was too late to evacuate - the winds were already too strong. Now it's a case of batten down the hatches and sit it out. Parents and friends have stocked up on food, taped or covered windows, filled up the generators and gathered in groups and communities at each other's houses. Strength in numbers, I guess. Plus the power and phones will be knocked out soon, so the easiest way to know you're all OK is too gather in the same shelter. Aussies aren't easily fazed, of course. I heard a guy on the radio today being interviewed about his night ahead.
"Well, we've followed all the advice, got a few friends here, a fridge full of beer and few nice bottles of wine too."
The safest place in most houses is the bathroom because it's small and usually tiled giving it extra strength, so I've heard the Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, reminding people to prepare for a long night in the bathroom!
If you read this during Wednesday or Thursday, you may want to check out this official Government site that shows a live satellite feed of the cyclone's progress, HERE.
11pm local time is when the violent edges hit the coast - so at 1pm Wednesday in the UK, spare a thought for the already weather weary Queenslanders who are huddled in their bathrooms, in the dark, sitting out a terrifying and historic weather event that may just make Mister Saffir and Mister Simpson wish they'd considered a number 6.
