Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia is suffering a rare “cyclone sandwich” – two gigantic tropical cyclones, Cyclone Marcia (cat 5 – like Katrina) and Cyclone Lam (cat 4) are smashing into the North of Australia at the same time as seen in the NASA/NOAA satellite photo.
Details here
Since my hometown is near the centre of the predicted track of Cyclone Marcia, naturally I am taking an interest in weather updates. I was more than a little shocked when I read the following:
JT, commenting on the Brisbane Times – February 20, 2015, 6:07AM
These type of weather events could happen further south in future and be more intense with global warming…….if anyone has to suffer out of this one I hope it is a climate change denier, if anyone.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cyclone-marcia-live-coverage-20150219-13iuaw.html
Thankfully this level of vicious fanaticism seems to be rare – natural disasters normally bring people together, we instinctively help each other to survive the worst which nature can throw at us.
The fact that such a sentiment could be voiced, in the face of a weather event which may yet cause severe loss of life, in my opinion shows what a toxic philosophy climate alarmism can be. The comment I saw today, is in my opinion no different to the misanthropy which led to the creation of the 10:10 video.
To at least some fanatics, whose lives are consumed by the alarmist message of hatred towards “deniers”, suffering and pain are acceptable, as long as the pain is visited upon the targets of their hatred.
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“Thankfully this level of vicious fanaticism seems to be rare…”
Apparently you haven’t seen Anthony’s inbox, I’ve heard it gets rather extreme.
You write these provocative posts, and Anthony’s crew handles the blowback.
Nice work if you can get it.
Apparently you have seen AW’s inbox? You’re cowering before the GW-ISIS movement?
Wow, a nasty unprovoked attack, I like it.
Now, how far do you want to take this ?
Mate, unless I’ve misinterpreted you post, in which case my apologies … otherwise, much like your unnecessary and nasty maligning of Eric.
So, how many solar panels need to be installed in Queensland before cyclones like Marcia are stopped?
The answer is found here, 15 seconds into this video:
January 22, 2015: The Queensland Leader of the Opposition Annastacia Palaszczuk (now Qld premier) has spoken of her desire to triple the number of Queenslanders with solar
oh thats bright
and they would be THE best thing to get ripped OFF a roof and take the rest of it with them in a cyclone.
apart from the detail that grid linked solar gets cut off in any power outs
while stand alone does NOT.
and everyones paying for the lucky few who can afford panels and get to claim rebates.
I worked as a field geologist around Mackay/Rockhampton for several decades and my diary notes for the year 1970 include the rainfall figures for Dalrymple Heights on January 18th plus January 19th of 25.80 inches (655mm) then January 20th of 12.09 inches (307mm). That’ a 3-day total of 37.89 inches (963mmm) and well before this AGW/’climate change’ notion was invented.
Well that kind of didn’t meet the early hype of 250km/hr winds … right now wind speeds adjacent the eye ~94km/hr. We’ve got a bit of rain here in Brisbane, little wind as such.
I have been tracking Marcia on the BOM’s radar and observations. At 9:16am local time the eye at Samuel Hill weather station was 8km away with a sustained wind speed of 87km/hr and gusts up to 133km/hr; at 9:36am local time with the eye approximately 5km away sustained wind speeds were 95km/hr with gusts up to 170km/hr, At 10:00am local time the eye was 4km away with sustained wind speeds of 89km/hr with gusts up to 163km/hr. At present the cyclone is passing over mostly uninhabited country though very slowly. There is a lot of rain, about 230mm in the last 18 hours.
😉
Stay safe. Florida took 5 direct hits in two years. We got three of them. Fort Lauderdale was bullseyed by Katrina moving west at then Cat 2 before she spun up and hit New Orleans as a cat3/4, and dirty sided by Wilma at Cat 3. Quite a mess for quite a while. Took two years to fully repair the grounds of our complex. Built to withstand Cat 5 150mph after Andrew, yet still took significant damage. After Wilma, we had up to six inches of sand, seaweed, and detritus on our ocean facing balcony about 100 meters inland from the Atlantic. On the 12th floor. Weather, not climate.
Even a cat 1 storm, well positioned at high tide etc. could flood New Orleans again. Katrina could have been worse if it had come ashore 50 to 100 mile west of where it did. Initially New Orleans thought that it had dodged the bullet. New Orleans is below sea level because of Man, not because of nature. The damage incurred by hurricanes/cyclones is a crap shoot, depending on the exact landfall and at high tide or low tide (or spring tide as with Sandy in NJ & NY).
Since no one actually denies that the climate changes, I see no harm in the comment.
/snark
Quote from Tim Flannery 2007 regarding southern Australia…
“That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems,….”
Quote from Dorothea MacKellar age 19 1908
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains
Tim should have paid attention…
Brisbane rainfall past 24 hours 116mm
As for Sydney
According to BOM..
“Rainfall was well above average across the Sydney basin during January 2015. Sydney Observatory Hill recorded 171.4 mm, 70% above the historical average and the wettest January since 2001, with some sites in northern Sydney experiencing their wettest January in at least twenty years”
Sydney dams doing ok as well…
http://www.sca.nsw.gov.au/water/dam-levels
On Marcia & Lam, over at Jo Nova:
Ken Stewart at 9:41 local:
“Samuel Hill is only a couple of km from eyewall and 87 to 130kmh. Not Cat 5!”
Unmentionable at 10:32, 10:46 local:
Large data dumps from Samuel Hill & Williamson:
“max sustained is about consistent with a weak Category-2 (Aust region)”
” … They are taking us all for mugs … ”
(Unmentionable has also covered TC Lam – look for “wag the dog”.)
Hmmm – had a feeling this might be a beat-up. Next time I’ll check, 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.
“max sustained is about consistent with a weak Category-2 (Aust region)”
—
After looking closer at the categories for both wind measures it became clear it was a strong Cat-2 and almost borderline 3 when it came ashore at 9:50 AM. It lost 20 km off the top almost straight away after that. Not a cat-3, certainly nowhere near the Cat-5 Wag the Dog TV hype addiction.
“I can’t get no … satisfaction … I tried, and, I tried … but I can’t go no … no no no … hey hey hey … that’s what I say …” – BOM house band
WOW, anyone would think that Queensland had never had a cyclone before.
http://www.windworker.com.au/qldcyclones.htm
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2011/02/australias-worst-cyclones-timeline/
JT had better hope that karma is not as brutal as it has known to be.
JT is a catastrophic climate change, back handed bigot. He is unlikely to be prepared for the normal extremes that mother nature throws at us every season, every year.
As for climate change realists, we tend to be prepared for changes in seasonal weather, based on prior experience. A late season storm is anticipated and embraced for the natural wonder it is!
Cyclone Marcia’s strength snuck up on the “experts” at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Perhaps they have an imbalance in the duties for their staff.
Too many of them are in the back room homogenising data.
I think it was the “experts” at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that snuck up on Cyclone Marcia.
Turned something a bit rough into a major catastrophy.
Worst values: speed gusts (km/hr) Samuel Hill 95 170 Yepoon 120 148 Rockhampton 76 113[Inserted html text formatting “pre” and “/pre” for the table. .mod]
Here are the floods in 2011, when they were running all of the dams too high.
http://www.extremestorms.com.au/calendar-based-archives-of-storm-articles/?calendar_year=2011
Wivenhoe Dam was flooded and homes downstream were washed out.
This article says that 60 roads are closed.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-fast-first-dams-full-as-tc-marcia-reaches-queensland-coast-and-the-latest-cyclone-news-february-20/story-fnqcjzme-1227228706002
“Seqwater does not expect to release water from Wivenhoe Dam, but there is a slight possibility it will have to if rainfall reaches the maximum 500mm that has been predicted.” – See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2015/02/20/eight-dams-overflowing-in-southeast-qld.html#sthash.Bair95Tz.dpuf
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2015/02/20/eight-dams-overflowing-in-southeast-qld.html
You all stay dry.
Science advances one funeral at a time. May she soon rest in peace.
The SMH and Peter Hannam at their alarmist best.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/cyclone-lam-and-cyclone-marcia-twin-severe-storms-a-first-for-australia-20150220-13jycu.html
Well, this CAGW denier would rather be copping Marcia than Mahina in 1899, with its phenomenal storm surge. And I’m sure glad the family had just driven through Bulahdelah before Australia’s greatest tornado…on New Year’s day 1970. As for the Hunter Floods, almost sixty years ago to the day, when an inland sea the size of England and Wales formed west of Sydney…whew.
If you are shocked by cyclones, storms, floods and other irregularities during Eastern and Northern Australia’s warm season you are either being coy or you would be shocked by a Porky Pig cartoon.
Hidden any declines lately Socrates?
check all of the 27 pics of the DEVASTATION at the start of this (they load fast), then check the pic further down the page of the intact awnings on the GIDDY GOAT cafe!
talk about hype.
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
At least the kids got a day off school and went swimming. Don’t know what they’re going to do about the gravel and pebbles on the foot path, I hope they’ve taped off the area and put down some witches hats, could easily pivot an ankle.
… and one wonders why the public pay little regard to these “scientists” and go out for a surf at Yeppoon at the height of the storm. Cry wolf too often and nobody listens anymore.
First hand reports here: Hyping cyclones
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/02/hyping-cyclones/
Don’t forget the SBS, they are still calling the storm a cat 4.
Many of those that have “played down the risks” are scientists themselves.
Even Jerusalem children are going to know what snow is
http://www.vijesti.me/media/cache/58/0c/580c612bbbfdf6035df2537eef8a29c1.jpg
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 live) gas CO2 which causes droughts, floods, snow, melting ice, more rain, higher temperatures, freezing conditions, blizzards etc
Show me an activist who claims to be a scientist, and I’ll show you an activist!