Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

The good news is that our apartment building had power switched on yesterday. We're hoping that the lift and fire protection services will be repaired today. Now that the lights are on we will be able to see how much cleaning is still left to do. It will be a lot. I'm still discovering storerooms in the building I didn't even know existed that were flooded.

The bad news is that Cyclone Yasi is coming to Queensland. It's big. REALLY BIG!
In 2006 Cyclone Larry hit towns in northern Queensland in the area around Townsville to Cairns, and did hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Yasi is expected to be as strong as Larry but is much, much bigger - 500km across and making a spiral of clouds with a diameter of 2,000km. It will hit the coast tomorrow and it is expected it will have winds in excess of 250km/h, and some models predicting gusts up to 315km/h.

 Satellite view 1 February 2011

All the resorts in the Whitsundays (a long chain of beautiful, tropical, white-sand holiday islands along the coast) have been evacuated. There is some information on Yasi here.

I'll probably be writing more about this...