Cyclone Larry - Hingehead Are You Okay?

Good to hear from you, hinge. <backs away from the chainsaws>

Pleased to see you back here, hinge & very relieved that you're still in one bit!

Whew! Thanks for checking in hingehead. Glad to hear that you and yours made it through.

Hi again everybuddy

Still in one piece (even after the chainsaw - couldn't find my hockey goalie mask)

Still 17000 homes without power in Cairns, but my place of work is open today.

Rain was really heavy last night - at 4 in the morning I'm out the back with an umbrella and a dolphin torch, in my shorts, clearing banana leaves out of the storm water drain so that the house downslope from us doesn't flood.

Wati is looking ominous:

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ65004.shtml

and now has 3 cats (our code for a category three cyclone). Will try and post some photos of the local mess - nothing as dramatic as the Innisfail shots.

Did I mention that Larry hit on my birthday - sheeish, the things Mrs Hinge will arrange to make an occasion really special....

HH

Belated happy birthday, hingehead! (You should have asked for something better as present! :wink: )

I have several A2K friends from Aus. I don't know if I have ever met Hingehead. I am glad to hear you are okay. I play against and chat with perhaps a dozen folks from Aus on a regular basis in the Scrabble thread. There is no way, really, to retrieve where they are from, so until they play again, I won't know how they fared.
Wati is still a bit out to sea. It made a bit of a slight right turn. Is that good?

You really can't tell JB, cyclones are notoriously unpredictable, though they were pretty spot on with Larry 36 hours before he hit.

The lack of fatalities is a combination of plenty of warning and locals knowing the drill and evacuating when asked to (apparently very few resisted when the police told them they had to get out).

Apparently cyclones follow low pressure troughs and that means he's going to cross the Australian coast somewhere - we just hope he's got as few cats as possible when he does. Experience shows they pick up strength over open water and then lose it over land.

We aren't much looking forward to another 48 hours like the one we just had.

Hope your scrabble buddies are OK - although I tend to think they aren't in FNQ, the web just doesn't seem to be the source of info and entertainment that it is down south.

There was an article in the paper this morning on this. Apparently people took note of Katrina and drew a lesson. At least something good came out of the mess in Louisiana.

Oddly enough Acquiunk, I think the Australian psyche is more affected by Cyclone Tracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_tracy

We learnt a lot of lessons from that one. The concrete block home is ubiquitous up here - although ours is a rare timber dwelling. It was built by a builder for his own family - the inspector we got in before we bought it was impressed by how well put together it was - I just hope we don't have to test it out very often.

Comparisons to Katrina don't bare up - although I'm sure Larry hit a raw nerve for many of our American compatriots. We're much less densely populated than the US - and we don't have housing below the sea level. There isn't a city with a population greater than 200,000 anywhere in the tropical zone, and what cities there are well-spaced so a cyclone that devestates one is unlikely to reach another.

Innisfail is home to just 8,000 people. Tully is less than half that and Babinda is just over a 1000 (but nice meat pies).

So, Hinge, m'boy - beware of Cyclone Margo (or more specifically cyclone aunt Betty) hitting your way mid-May!

I wait with bated breath for 'Margot and Betty's totally bogus adventure'!

Happy birthday, hinge! You won't forget this one in a hurry!

heres a real chainsaw hinge go forth and do some real damage.



You might want to tighten the chain a bit first though!

Wati was named by the Fijians - it means 'spouse' - I don't actually know what gender the term is, or if it even has one.

I found this on the BOM site - a a combination of all the known cyclone paths that have crossed Australia

Makes us look like Larry from the Three Stooges, or maybe the pointy haired boss from dilbert:

Hey dad

I think my chainsaw is a Breville - lucky banana trees are all water.

Glad everyone is ok :-)

<checking in late, happy to see Hinge>

osso - where's the corgi?