sallysetsforth

7.00pm

This blog post has been updated a few times since I started writing it this morning. It's changed from a "boy it's wet" post to a "OMG cyclone!" post *lol* - you can see my earlier scribblings below :)

The wind is really picking up now and the lights are flickering, so I'm going to turn the computer off when I've uploaded this blog post (although I'll try to keep up with the news via my laptop and wireless connection). I'm sure we'll be absolutely fine - our house is built to code, and this is just a baby of a storm really. But it's my first cyclone, so I've been a bit excitable today (have you noticed? *lol*).

We've just heard that all the schools are going to be closed tomorrow, so it's possible that the University where I work will be closed too. I think it's standard procedure when a cyclone warning is issued? There's nothing on the website to say what's happening though, so I guess I'll find out in the morning ...

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6.00pm

I'm home now. Everything was fine in my litle office cocoon, but I was a bit worried about getting home safely. Now we're here, and I'm not going anywhere for the time being. It will be interesting to see what the weather's like tomorrow morning when the tropical low is closest.

The cyclone watch has been upgraded to a cyclone warning, which is mostly related to how close it is. The tropical low will pass by us overnight before heading to sea (and Bathurst Island), by which time it will be a Category 1 cyclone. Hopefully it will keep on going and not turn around!

We've had a couple of severe thunderstorm warnings this afternoon. I'm not sure if they were related to or separate from the tropical low, which will pass Darwin later tonight. They came from the other direction, but I don't know enough about weather patterns to know if they could have been part of the low. The thunderstorm warnings were for destructive / damaging winds. We saw a few trees down on the way home, and heaps of leaves and branches on the ground. I also heard of power outages and road closures. A really wild and woolly day.

I took another video when I got home to demonstrate the effects of the wind and rain on the trees in our backyard. It's like an amplified version of this morning's video - more rain, more wind and more frogs :)



And of course I found time to do a little photoshoot in the rain for Daily Image 2011!



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12:00pm

A cyclone watch has now been declared for the tropical low that is currently just south of Darwin. I rang Tim to let him know to secure the backyard and prepare our emergency kit as part of the cyclone watch procedures. He reminded me that it was a couple of days ago that I first noticed the spiral movement on the radar.

A forecast track map has now been published by the Bureau of Meteorology. The tropical low is expected to pass close by Darwin overnight, before developing into a Category 1 cyclone over water. It will then be heading for Bathurst Island. Here's a link to the Bureau's Tropical Cyclone warning website. The website is dynamic, so the information will be different depending on when you view it.

Honestly, a tropical low / Category 1 cyclone is more exciting than it is scary at this point. A bit of wild weather drama without the run-for-your-lives factor. We'll see if I still feel that way later tonight ;)

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10.00am

I started writing this blog post in the morning before coming to work. I didn't upload it at the time, because I wanted to include a couple of videos (see below). Since then, the tropical low has become official, and we have a severe weather warning in place. We've been advised to secure loose outside objects, with winds of up to 90km/hr forecast. It's not our first bout of severe weather this season, but it's the first time we've seen a tropical low develop over land. As I mentioned in the blog post below, it's the high winds that make me nervous. And looking at the weather radar, the tropical low is moving in a slightly alarming spiral fashion ...

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8.00am

At the time of writing, it has been raining pretty solidly in Darwin for over 24 hours. There's a monsoonal trough or tropical low or something, and it's dumping a bunch of rain on us! The Bureau of Meteorology predicts squally storms for the next few days. There's a flood threat warning and coastal wind warning in place. On the plus side, all this rain sure keeps the temperature down! We're looking at maximums of 27°C for the next couple of days (the minimums are 24°C in case you're kidding yourself that it's cold up here!).

Here's a short video that I took this morning of the rain in our backyard. It's not pelting down hard, it's just constant. I must admit that I get a little nervous when the wind picks up - it's still cyclone season here.



In the video, you can hear the croaking of a single frog. We called him "the frog that was left behind", a lonely bachelor still looking for love after all the other frogs had paired up. Here's another video I took this morning, where you can see the little fellow who's making such a racket!



I suffer for my art - I got absolutely drenched from the chest down while taking this video! I have a big birdcage-style umbrella, but it can only do so much when the rain seems to hit you from all sides. It's kind of funny actually, everyone in Darwin seems to have big golf-style umbrellas, as anything less (such as a folding umbrella) just won't cut it. In Melbourne, I remember that golf umbrellas were few and far between - especially in the CBD, as there just wasn't room on the footpaths for everyone to have such a big umbrella :)