TC Larry

[den]

Cyclone Larry (cat.5, 290kph winds) is battering Innisfail and Cairns right now. The eye passed ove Innisfail ay 8.30 (7.30 EST) Good luck up there.

Comments

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

:(!!!!!

The tornado that pased over my building was a weak F1. I have been dumb enough to be much too close several times. Without a camera. We've had the odd f3's , but an F5 is not unheard of (Texas, etc). I hope the losses are minimal, but it's hard to guess what a funnel will do, even with an F1.

F5:

Incredible tornado 261-318 mph Strong frame houses lifted off foundations and carried considerable distances to disintegrate; automobile sized missiles fly through the air in excess of 100 meters; trees debarked; steel re-inforced concrete structures badly damaged.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Larry is the same size az Hurricane Katrina, but the population centres it's pounding are much smaller than New Orleans, and they're above sea level.

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

About the same size, but it's winds are even stronger, about as powerful as an F2 or F3 tornado and I woulnd't be surprised if there is little but devastation left.

Could be worse I guess.

Back in 1974, the city of Xenia was leveled by an F5 (it's about 30 miles northwest of me). Check out some of the pictures here: http://www.xeniatornado.com/

It literally looked like a nuclear bomb had hit the city. I hope those two towns beign hit by Larry fare better :/

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Larry left a lot of structural damage but as yet no fatalities.

In 1974 a cat4 cyclone Tracy levelled Darwin. 70% of the houses in the city were destroyed, 100% of the buildings were damaged. "Nuked" is a very good description. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Tracy

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

Wow, 74 was a bad year for storms o.o

That looks worse than even what Xenia got. Even though an F5 has stronger winds, they blow for 5-15 minutes or so at most. Cyclones and hurricanes blow for hours and hours.

It's good no one's been found dead yet, though I imagine it probably killed a lot of bats and other animals :(

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

Ah, I found a picture of the actual thing in action:

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

That's about as close as I was to the F1, which was about 1/3 the size. I am guestimating from the number of buldings directly underneath . I winder if they rotate opposite down under, the same way toilets flush.

God, what a silly thought at a pic like that.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Yep. Lows rotate clockwise here, so cyclones and tornadoes spin the opposite way to your's.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

I have been *very* lucky. The safest place to be in a situation such as a tornado if you want to observe is a good 15-20 miles away, on the side away from the funnel development area. So they say.

One of the tornadoes I saw touch down here I saw from the side, at 7:39 a.m. on June 24, 1997. If I had had a video camera, I could have made money from the film, as they have no film of a tornado from thst close taken from a side view. I saw the wall cloud descend and form the funnel; it was flat and then suddenly rolled up and sideways creating the vortex. Thank the gods it went back up into the front and the rain hit like a wall 90 seconds later. It was in a residential area and had it stayed on the ground an entire shopping district could have been seriously damaged.

I will never forget the sight as long as I live. I was within foolhardy disance and damned lucky. I do not advocate this sort of observation. If there is storm spotting training in your area it's a must if you want to survive. I've just been caught and been lucky, and I *always* keep in mind how deadly nature can be. And these are mild compared to the ones that shaped our mudball planet:D.

Beautiful and terrible is, for me, an apt description.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Larry is a Cat 4 cyclone now and dropping, unless it swings north into The Gulf and picks up more heat.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

No, not Texas. Wisconsin actually. I was citing Texas because they have had some really devastating twisters in the last 40 years, but they are not alone.I grew up in Illinois, with the tornado magnet of the central part, next door to the county I lived in growing up. I saw none in my youth; I was in the basement when there was any danger. But in summer we have as much chance of tornadic activity as any of the other states in the midwest.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[jamesb]

Reports from the district hospitals indicate that (so far) the casualty list is extremely low, and those hospitals that were damaged, received only minor damage (water leaks and broken windows), although some are running on emergency power.

Cairns ... despite (Fox) news reports of 20 admitted casualties, local medical staff are reporting no admitted casualties.
Innisfail (where the cyclone crossed the coast) ... no casualties admitted and no fatalities reported
Marreba ... one casualty admitted (broken arm)
Atherton ... two casualties admitted (one head injury and one with 2 broken legs)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I almost got a look at the '98 Nashville tornado up-close-and-personal. I was working downtown, in an office on the 15th floor, and like a bunch of idiots we were all watching it approach out the office window. About the same time my sense of self-preservation belatedly kicked in, the "move to the stairwells" alarm went off and everyone went, "Oh shit, yeah, that's a tornado!"

I remember two things vividly: watching it pass over the Nashville Electric Service building and the searing blue flashes of transformers blowing up one after the other; and seeing something that looked, at first glance, like a piece of paper blowing around in the air currents -- only to realize that it was actually an entire plate-glass window blowing around in the air currents, and probably half a mile away.