Wednesday, February 16, 2011

New cyclone threatens Australia

Everton Fox in Al-Jazeera.net: Just two weeks after Tropical Cyclone Yasi caused massive destruction to parts of Australia, another big storm has brought further flooding to the far north of the country. Tropical Cyclone Carlos dumped a total of 339.6mm of rain over Darwin during the 24 hour period ending midnight GMT on Wednesday. This is an all-time record for the city over a 24 hour period and eclipses anything that Yasi produced over any town in a single day.

In fact, Darwin has now had a staggering 470mm of rain over a 48-hour period and there is more to come. The storm is moving very slowly and that is why we are seeing such huge rainfall totals over a similar area. In the case of Yasi the wind was as much a damaging feature as the rain. Typical rainfall totals were nearer 160mm of rain over a 24 hour period.

The other concern is the strength of the winds. Cyclone Carlos has uprooted trees and downed power lines. The storm has been classified as a category one storm and may well intensify into a category two over the next 24 to 36 hours and there-in lies the source of some confusion….

Flooding in the low-lying areas of Townsville, Queensland, shot by Rob and Stephanie Levy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

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