Glenda Now Cat 4 - 155 MPH Sustained, 180 Miles Off Oz NW Coast

[hatrack]

CANBERRA - A severe cyclone with winds exceeding 250 kph (155 mph) menaced northern parts of Western Australia on Wednesday, less than two weeks after a storm devastated homes and crops on the other side of the country.

Some oil and gas operations and key iron ore ports closed ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Glenda in an area known as "cyclone alley" because it is regularly swept by storms at this time of year.

The storm was downgraded later on Wednesday to a category four, one below the most powerful grade for cyclones, and was about 300 km (186 miles) north of the town of Port Hedland and moving slowly west, the Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre said. "Tomorrow's really the day where things could happen," said forecaster Adam Conroy from the centre in Perth, the capital of Western Australia.

The remote Pilbara region under threat is home to around 10,000 people and includes Woodside Petroleum's A$14 billion (US$10 billion) North West Shelf liquefied natural gas project at Karratha, about 1,300 km (800 miles) north of Perth. "Residents of the central and west Pilbara coast are warned of the risk of very destructive winds with gusts exceeding 250 km per hour during Thursday as this very dangerous cyclone nears the coast," the Bureau of Meteorology said on its Web site (www.bom.gov.au).

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/35832/story.htm

[Ezlivin]

1. Has cyclonic activity near Australia ramped up lately?

N/T

[hatrack]

2. It is cyclone season, and they just had Larry, but long term? Not sure.

I'm just not that versed in Australian meteorology - you might want to PM Phantom Power.

[philb]

8. I had heard they had a lot less cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere

that they are very infrequent there in most areas. Is Australia different?

[phantom power]

4. There's less data on the southern hemisphere, so...

hurricane experts are even less inclined to draw conclusions about the Indian Ocean than they are about the Atlantic. Their detailed records only go back to 1980. So far this season, they aren't breaking any records, but the totals looked slightly higher than average.

However, Larry and Glenda were both "exceptional" storms. As always, I think something new is happening. The experts are reluctant to draw conclusions, which is responsible of them since they are trying to be good scientists and professionals. I'm free to speculate, since I'm just a computer programmer with a jones for climate disaster porn.

I get a lot of my "knowledge" from reading Jeff Masters' blog:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

[Dogmudgeon]

7. "Climate Disaster Porn"

Isn't it funny how everything's "Porn" except Porn -- which is now erotica -- ?

No wonder I can't salute the flag anymore.

:evilgrin:

--p!

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. Aust cyclone = US hurricane = Asia typhoon?

Different words for the same weather phenomena, right? In America, a cyclone is a tornado.

[phantom power]

5. Yes, they are the same thing. In the southern hemisphere...

they spin the other direction. I wish they'd pick one name, but now it's tradition, so I assume we're stuck with it.

A "cyclone" is actually the technical term for air moving about a low pressure center. In the northern hemisphere, a cyclone spins counter-clockwise. In the southern hemisphere, it spins clockwise.

So, a tornado is also a cyclone. A very small, violent cyclone.

[phantom power]

6. Well, tracking map says it has made landfall, as cat-3.