Morning of Wednesday 2/2/11 = I was woken up by Dad, who told me that we would start feeling the effects of the cyclone within 3 hours. He was right. By about 10 in the morning, wind speeds were apparently around 40kph (25mph). The sky was pretty dark, and my family was rushing around cleaning the yard and moving all of the garden ornaments and stuff. My parents did a dump run, and left me to tape up all of the glass windows and doors. While I was doing that, some random guy was on the news, telling us that the cyclone was category 5 (the most destructive category) and that our shelters only withstand cat. 3, so basically, we're all fucked. He also said there was no point in taping windows, and no matter how much you try to protect your children, they will die anyway. I was pretty damn angry at this guy, and the TV station for allowing this dickwad to stir people up. If a place is preparing for a natural disaster, DO NOT TELL THEM THEIR KIDS ARE GUARANTEED TO DIE. That's not very nice at all. It's seriously the last thing people want to hear. So I sat there, outraged with a roll of masking tape in my hands. I finished the windows and my parents came home. I'll skip over midday, where my dog decided to be a naughty little shit and make everyone angry. The video below is our backyard at midday, 12 hours before it hit.
Late afternoon of Wednesday 2/2/11 = The house was clean, important stuff was moved off the floor in case of flooding. We were about as ready as we could get. We decide to go for a drive around town, to see how well other places were prepared (stupid idea, I know. But we were bored shitless!). We got down to the beach, and the rain started. We got a phone call from my Dad's cousin saying that her and her son were scared and wanted to stay overnight, and that they were leaving their house now. So we went back home, and the cyclone was really starting to pick up.
Around 7pm on Wednesday 2/2/11 = We had found that all the wind was blowing onto one side of the house, so we closed the windows, and sat out on the patio and watched the storm. Surprisingly, it seemed to be all wind and hardly any rain, which is kind of bizzare. Typically, cyclones have destructive winds that rip off ceilings, then the rain gets in and destroys your stuff. This time, it was mostly wind, and very light rain. The news kept us updated on the speed of the cyclone itself, and the time that it was supposed to reach land got later and later, which is bad news. The slower a cyclone goes, the more intense it is. Originally, it was supposed to be 9pm, coinciding with the high tide. Then it was 11pm, then the news was saying midnight.
10:30pm on Wednesday 2/2/11 = We lost all power. Since it was so late, and most places already lost power hours before, we assumed ours would last until we fell asleep. So of course, we didn't have our radios, torches or candles ready when we finally lost it. The first 2 minutes of blackout was a desperate scramble for something that emitted light. When we found torches, we realised the radio batteries didn't work. So we dug through our cupboards, and eventually found six C batteries. We lit some candles, and sat around listening to the radio. Towards midnight, something happened and the radio signal became a bit jumbled. We picked up four different stations at once, and none of them were giving information. We turned it off, and attempted to sleep. The attempt wasn't very good.
1:23am on Thursday 3/2/11 (3rd of Feb for you Americans) = This is when the strongest winds were recorded. I distinctly remember waking up to a very, very loud noise. I checked the time, and looked on facebook to see how other people were doing. Apparently, other people were also woken up by the noise of the winds, and some people were listening to stuff getting dragged across their roof. A few days later, we bought the paper and it specifically mentioned this exact time as being the strongest point of the storm for Townsville. Wind speeds were recorded at 130kph (80mph). When I looked out my window, all I could see was the tree in the neighbours yard bending over and hitting my window (it's an incredibly flexible tree). Due to the lack of power and fans, I tried to sleep on top of my bed covers, but I decided to put my sheets over my legs because if the tree went through my window, I'd get a body full of glass, and that's not very nice. So I suffered through the night with a closed window, no fans, and a tree tapping on my window next to my bed.
9am on Thursday 3/2/11 = I went out to survey the damage, and I took a video. In total, 6 trees out of the ground. One tree broken in half but still upright, as well as two broken gates. The metal bolt thing broke off one of them, so it was wide open and flapping around in the wind. On the other side, we lost a fence paling, which created a gap big enough for my dog to get through, as you see in the video. I stopped filming because he ran straight onto the road and got attacked by much bigger dogs, who I had to rescue him from. Notice the winds, still strong 9 hours after the cyclone crossed the coast.
8pm on Thursday 3/2/11 =Still no power, cooking by candlelight. We lived like this with no power for about a day and a half, which wasn't too bad.
That's about it for my story, since after this it was all clean-up. I'll put up some pictures from around the city. The first one is just around the corner from my house. 30+ trees were taken out, all laying on the road and footpaths.
Below is a massive palm tree being held up by a power line. Very dangerous.
The weir near my house, and right next to a tavern. This isn't too bad compared to some of the other floods and stuff we've had, but look at that poor tree on the left :(
Another massive fallen tree covering the road.
Another suburb where most of the trees were upturned, with the roots facing the road.
KFC lost their rotating bucket.
The icecream place right on the beach boarded up their windows. There were other signs about town saying stuff like "Kiss My Yasi".
Another view of that tree on the powerline.
As I get more photos, I'll keep adding them in new posts.
