How big is Cyclone Yassi??

[auxtian]

This is the cyclone cat 5 that is hitting Queensland Australia

http://twitpic.com/3vow7y

bit big ay???

[Cobia]

First the floods, now a cat 5 hurricane!!!
Who did you folks piss off??
Stay safe, I feel for you.

[auxtian]

yassi

This is a better report

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/spe...-1225998850720

[natemoen]

Dang! That's HUGE!

[Iron Duke]

Yasi

Auxtian,
I have a sister and brother-in-law living in Carins QLD lost internet with her yesterday at noon, Yasi was still off coast when I last heard from her, don't know if thay made it down to earlville shopping centre or not.Hope thay are O K thay downgreaded Yasi to a 3 for carins, but still ya never know.

[slow mo]

Auxtian,
I have a sister and brother-in-law living in Carins QLD lost internet with her yesterday at noon, Yasi was still off coast when I last heard from her, don't know if thay made it down to earlville shopping centre or not.Hope thay are O K thay downgreaded Yasi to a 3 for carins, but still ya never know.

i like you have a niece in the same area ,i have had no contact yet ,,the good news being yassi has been downgraded to a two at last report but still carries 6to 7 hundred mm of rain ,,slow mo!

[XSive Okie]

That's a massive storm! I hope everyone fares well.

[slow mo]

more news on yassi

Cairns escapes worst
Cyclone Yasi has left Cairns relatively unscathed and the city will be open for business "very soon", the city's mayor says.
"The CBD and our beautiful esplanade in Cairns is unscathed," Mayor Val Schier said on Thursday morning.
"The main concern at the moment is we're waiting for the electricity authority to let us know the all clear because we don't want people coming into contact with live power lines.
"We lost power in some suburbs from very early on - from 7 o'clock in the evening - so the majority of Cairns is without power."
She said there had been no major reports of structural damage.
"We'll be out cleaning the streets and getting rid of the debris and giving people the all clear to go home," she said.

[Iron Duke]

Yasi aftermath cleanup

thanks for the heads up Slow-Mo

[natemoen]

Good to hear slow mo

[slow mo]

Yasi worked its way across the country's far northeast coast around midnight as a Category 5 storm, just as forecasters had predicted, bringing winds of nearly 280 kilometres an hour.


But as soon as it made landfall, the storm immediately began weakening. Still, it was strong enough to create plenty of destruction.
"The field of devastation is quite large," reporter Michael Westlake of the Courier-Mail newspaper told CTV's Canada AM Thursday morning from Brisbane.
"The cyclone was quite big; it was actually 500-km wide, so we're talking about a massive swath of destruction that's been cut through the Queensland coast."
Hundreds of houses were destroyed or seriously damaged and power to more than 180,000 homes severed. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said several thousand people were now homeless because of the storm. Red Cross Australia and local governments were working on registering people in need and finding places to house them.
In the town of Cardwell, where storm surges washed deep in the town, boats and debris now litter the streets. Elsewhere, hundreds of millions of dollars of banana and sugarcane crops were shredded by the storm.
But for now, the focus is on being grateful that no lives were lost.
"The good news for Queensland was where it hit was very sparsely populated area," said Westlake.
"It swung away from the majors centres of Cairns and Townsville, so that was some good news and large part of the reason why we've been fortunate enough not to have any fatalities out of this event. But the damage to infrastructure, to crop, to private property and houses is just astronomical."
Officials said they believed that lives were spared because about 100,000 citizens in Yasi's path had followed instructions to flee to evacuation centres set up in shopping centres and other heavy-built facilities.
"This was the worst cyclone this country has experienced, potentially, for 100 years and I think that due to very good planning, a very good response ... we've been able to keep people safe," Queensland's Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts told reporters.
The cyclone hit just north of an area of Queensland that has seen the worst flooding in decades. The floods have swamped an area the size of Germany and France combined and caused an estimated $5.6 billion in damage since November.
"Queensland has certainly suffered this year; it's been quite an amazing run of events," said Westlake.
"Obviously, there's a lot of rebuilding that needs to go on around the state because there's been such devastation with the infrastructure damage from the massive floods in the south, and now with the north being torn apart by the cyclonic winds of Yasi."

[Crusty Snippets]

Size

I would cover almost all of the US mainland.
Sailinganarchy.com has photos.
Unkle Crusty

[XSive Okie]

Anyone know if our Aussie friends made it through and are okay?

[Iron Duke]

My people made it thru O K, thay got there power back at noon today, and my sis couldn't wait to get back to games on FB, house n yard wern't even touched, my thoughts are with those who were hit abc.net.au said over 5 billion in damage