Rain and flood

Bunker set into a hill perhaps?

Housing built in the last 30 years has increasingly high wind ratings the further north you go, so wind damage shouldn't be quite as all-encompassing as you might expect. And the coast is more sparsely populated than many countries, so the death toll won't be in the hundreds. The cities are of course more of a concern.

Having said all that, virtually no house is designed to withstand 186mph winds. So we're back to the concrete bunker. :(

As Coug says though, it's the rain and consequential flooding exacerbated by a huge storm surge that's the big problem. I see it's now timed to cross the coast at high tide. Jesus.

Warning bulletin from the normally sober Bureau of Meteorology contains lots of shouting.
 
They still use miles per hour, rather than m/sec or km/hr?
 
CougTek said:
Bunker? With all the rain that's coming with it, underground is the last place you want to be.
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Apparently a while back after a nasty cyclone the government gave financial incentives for bunker construction (obviously only worthwhile if located above storm surge/flood levels).
 
Of course not, Australia has used the metric system for more than 40 years. The mph reference was for the old codgers in this forum ...

300 km/h ~ 186 mph ~ 162 knots ~ 83 m/s

I just checked and that's >=3 second gusts, BTW. Sustained average speeds over 10 minutes are currently 115 knots or 210km/h.
 
Hey, I learned the metric system in 1969. :p I use it every day at work, too.
 
As I expected - but I'm no meteorologist - the large size caused it to collapse pretty fast once it approached land. Serious damage looks to have been largely confined to a couple of small towns (who have had the crap kicked out of them, obviously).

I haven't seen any reports yet of house destruction where they were constructed to the building code, i.e. built in the last 30 years or so. So it's wiped out a lot of old houses and some of dubious construction quality.

That's what you'd expect; Queensland sees cyclones every year (although few cause significant damage). By and large, the coastal communities are used to this sort of thing.

I don't believe Yasi will retain its (low band) Cat 5 classification in the scientific post mortem. I've seen no evidence that there were ever 285 km/h winds, even when the eye passed quite close to meteorological stations. It doesn't help when most of them seemed to be broken, despite their primary purpose being to monitor conditions like this.

The damage forecasts, including the storm surge predictions, were based on it being a bona fide Category 5, and that it would retain this status even after crossing the coast. I'm increasingly concerned with the quality of information from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology - but as I said, I'm not a meteorologist.
 
Well, I'm sorry to hear about your little gust of wind, but here it's been the Apocalypse. We've had close to a foot of snow and the roads were like a freshly waxed bowling alley. I had to drive about a hundred kilometers with a rental RWD van that couldn't drive straight passed 60Km/h. To top it all, I lost the keys in the snow in the late afternoon and I had to call someone to bring me a replacement key during rush hour.

Even if it was white everywere, it was a black day for me.
 
Are you in emergency services? I'd take a day off to avoid an accident.
 
I'm opening a new store and untill it opens and starts to bank in money, I'm bleeding cash big time. So in a way, yes, I'm in emergency and unless a volcano burst out of the ground between me and my suppliers, I'll be on the road to get all the missing stuff I need to open the store. Today was the big furniture day and it couldn't wait.

Official opening is supposed to be Monday if I don't go bankrupt before.

And sorry to have totally derailed the thread. I'm completly O.T. with the last comment.
 
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I'm glad the storm was less than expected and hope you guys have little water damage as well.

The strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in the 20th century was one that hit the Florida keys in 1935 with winds estimated at 200mph. It removed the grass. :0
 
Howell said:
I'm glad the storm was less than expected and hope you guys have little water damage as well.

The strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in the 20th century was one that hit the Florida keys in 1935 with winds estimated at 200mph. It removed the grass. :0
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Grass grows really fast in FL. ;)
 
Bringing this back up:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-16/flood-report-paves-the-way-for-compensation/3895130

"Some of the most serious findings in the report relate to Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam.

It says the dam's manual was not properly followed on the weekend leading up to Brisbane's flood peak.

That means the dam's operator SEQ Water and its owner - the State Government - may now be liable for compensation.

But the commissioner notes the manual was ambiguous, unclear and difficult to use - factors which should not be overlooked.

The report also says the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) should investigate the actions of three dam engineers over misleading reports and testimony about the flood event.

There is also a suggestion of collusion between two of the men.

Premier Anna Bligh says the matter was referred to the CMC this morning. "
 
Meh. Some lawyers (and politicians) are trying to find scapegoats for a natural disaster. According to them, water releases from the dam may have been less than prescribed by the 'operating manual' for about 32 hours. Fucking semantics, they would have had to start releasing a week beforehand to make any significant difference to flood levels - and that was NOT in the manual.

The engineers are screwed either way: if they used their professional expertise to override the 'manual', they're negligent for not following the manual; if they follow the 'manual' blindly, they're negligent for not exercising their professional expertise.

One consequence of this lawyers' picnic is that dam engineers will not be able to get insurance, and therefore dam operators will not be able to find dam engineers.

I'm really, really over lawyers overruling engineers and scientists. There is no logical basis for it whatsoever. We recently had a court appeal where a physics professor was found to have been unsophisticated in his attempts to simulate a body being thrown over a cliff. Any engineer or student of physics would have arrived at the same conclusions as the professor - newsflash: Newton was right - yet the appeal judges were more convinced by some 'biomechanics' consultant (IMO a PE teacher or coach is a biomechanics consultant). Total bullshit.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...-ask-gordon-wood/story-e6freuy9-1226299728652
 
Look at this as yet another attempt by your continent to prove that it isn't actually fit for human habitation, time. :)
 
As compared to where? Most civilization centered on areas with waters so flooding has always been a risk.
 
Oz is the land of 70mph wildfires, rampaging koalas, baby-eating dingos, nature-show eating jellyfish, testicle-eating footballers and a wide variety of other poisonous fauna.
 
I've been through 4 major quakes, three of which were personally damaging and two of those caused bodily injury. It's not any fun having no power or water, and being hit in the head with a falling blunt object. :(
 
My wife is infatuated with California. I don't really see the appeal of it. Sure the weather is nice (in parts), but the amount of negatives you have to put up with for that nice weather far outweighs the nice weather.
 
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