Trevor and Veronica

[jdsrae]

Slightly off topic, but here's a current weather report from NW Oz.

The time to send all ships to safer ports and temporarily relocate air units is now.
The time for land based units to take shelter is rapidly approaching.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Trevor has already cut a path east to west from the Coral Sea (first landfall as a Category 3 near hex 91,132 Portland Roads) to the Gulf of Carpentaria on 10 March and is now looking to make landfall #2 at 10am Sat morning in the vicinity of hex 82,134 as a bigger Category 4 Cyclone.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Veronica is coming in simultaneously from the NW, and will cross the coast about 2am Sunday as a Category 4 Cyclone near hex 55,129 just west of Port Hedland. There are some large iron ore operations in that area represented in game by the resources at Corunna Downs.

http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/index.shtml

People live in these places, granted not many, but many have been evacuated to shelters and will be facing a nervous wait followed by uncertainty as to what they will return to.
Anyone who stays will be making last minute preparations, taking shelter and crossing their fingers...

The cyclone season runs from Nov to Apr so this isn't unheard of, but two at once doesn't happen very often.

[RangerJoe]

If the starting location is about the same place, the first one takes the heat and mixes up the water so the second one does not get that much energy for development. But we are lucky where we live in that we are not friendly with our storms and name them.

[BBfanboy]

Do those cyclones typically hook north (as Atlantic Hurricanes do) or south? Is Darwin likely to take a hit?

[RangerJoe]

From the track that I saw, it would land between Darwin and Normantown. They (I think) usually turn south down there and not north like up here.

[rustysi]

They (I think) usually turn south down there and not north like up here.

Yeah, everything is upside down and backward 'Down Under'.[:D]

[jdsrae]

Once they cross the coast they hook south and then move west to east.
They lose energy and the destructive winds drop away fairly rapidly, but they stay as a low pressure cell with lots of wind and rain.
With the path they will take most of Australia will be getting a big drink from these systems over the next week or so.
Once they approach the more populated areas like Sydney the news reporters will get all excited and start calling them stupid names like “mega storms”...
Darwin is safe from these ones. I lived there for 4 years and we had two very near misses from cyclones and also felt two earthquakes from the Banda Sea. But that’s about as exciting as things get in Darwin!

[JeffroK]

I was in Perth in the early 80's and had the tails of 2 cyclones and 2 earth tremors.

Now I'd be happy to get 25mm of rain spread over a week, its bloody dry down here.

[wegman58]

Grew up in NYC, had a couple of hurricanes. AND was in the Atlantic, and had one chase our task force in 1980 or 1981. We turned one way, storm would turn that way. Turn again, storm would turn. Finally had the storm get to colder water and die near Iceland.

Nice 16,000 ton ammunition ship. Not bad for us.