Cyclone Alfred

 As some of you might be aware, we recently had the first fully blown cyclone to hit Brisbane in fifty odd years. Cyclone Alfred wandered its way down from the tropics slowly heading east-south east until it got to the latitude of Brisbane, about 500km off the coast. Then it stalled for a day or so. Then began it's slow track west.

We had about a week of predictions/heads up that it WAS going to hit the coast somewhere around South East Queensland as a category 2 storm. 

We didn't panic buy like many...well, not food or toilet paper....

I did move the uninsured bikes out of my shed into the much safer garage that is located under our house. Track bikes and Lucy's Z650.

 It was a bit surreal here in Brisbane as I watched the predicted track maps and as Alfred got closer and closer. 

Doesn't look like much on the radar!

The winds were strong though.

Apart from some windy periods (maybe up to 30 knot gusts) it wasn’t very cloudy. In fact we had plenty of dead calm and sunny conditions.

Not so for the Gold Coast and northern NSW though. They were on the southern side of the approaching cyclone and were hammered with high winds and torrential rain for about two days - while we were still enjoying sunshine - and there were many power losses due to trees across the power lines and the beach erosion on the Gold Coast was significant.

Friday afternoon and with it predicted to hit us Friday night I put the drone up to have a look around. Looking south east towards the Gold Coast it looked very dark. Normally we can see the high rise buildings on the Gold Coast just to the left of Mt Stayplton and its white dot of a weather radar on top.(centre right of photo)

Looking east towards the Redlands (Redland Bay/Victoria Point etc) it definitely looked close! It was just moving sooo slowly at between 4 and 7km/h. I couldn't go very high as the wind aloft was obviously a lot stronger than on the ground. I could here the drone motors surging hard to hold position, then I got a strong wind/land immediately warning. Things were hotting up!

Getting real now!!

Things got real on the Friday night when the winds really started kicking up a gear. I have a huuuge (30m/100ft) iron bark gum tree (eucalypt) that is less than 20m from the back corner of the house. I was pleased that with the direction of the wind, if it did come down it would go down across the neighbour’s back yard (and not their house or mine!)

The offending tree looks small here but is huuge! The wind was coming from the bottom of the photo, thankfully. 

Another angle of said tree. 

I went to bed that night to the sound of howling wind gusts and rain on the roof. Waking at about 5am Saturday it was strangely dead calm. A couple of hours after that the wind picked up again and the rain teemed down. I think we had the eye pass over and now we were getting the winds from the other side of the cyclone. Luckily again, the wind was almost an easterly which IF that big gum tree came down, it would lay just on the bottom side of my shed. 

I just had a few small branches down. Nothing thicker than say, your arm but plenty of small stuff.

Saturday afternoon we sat on the deck watching the wind in the forest behind home as the rain teemed down. We watched a couple of huge gum trees (eucalypts) come crashing down in the neighbour’s backyards! Luckily the wind was blowing them away from their houses so only a couple of fences were flattened.

Late Saturday afternoon we lost power. Bummer, as I had taken my generator down to a friends place in Redland Bay who had lost power on Friday night. I couldn’t go ask for it back now! As it was we got power back 20 hours later on Sunday afternoon whereas they lost it for three days so their need was much greater than mine. I just told the kids not to open the fridges or freezer at all - well, except very briefly to grab dinner Saturday night which was a simple affair of bbq sausages in bread, cooked on the bbq. Desert was individual puddings, heated up in water boiled on the little portable camp stove.

 Having all the camping gear made the inconvenience of no power a non event. The main issue was having no internet and hence no news of what was going on during the day around South East QLD. That was a great reminder that all of this electronic media is useless without electricity. Something to ponder....

Considering the wind and amount of rain we had it was surprising to see that only one house in our street had a tree on the roof. Our houses are all surrounded by trees! In other streets around here there were quite a few trees down across roads but they had already been cleared by SES volunteers.

Going for a walk around the house on the Sunday I was almost landed on by a Rainbow Lorikeet. I stood still under a branch and it came down, hanging upside down, within reach, just looking at me.

Just prior to his acrobatics. 

It then landed on the ground and hopped around me and between my legs! I called Will to bring some parrot food out and we placed some on the garden bench and stood back. The Lorikeet and his mate came straight down to feed on the seed. The poor things were pretty knackered from the wind and rain and it was a very cool interaction with these storm survivors and otherwise wild birds.

While there was clearly a lot of damage in places from trees coming down on houses and power lines, beaches eroded and general flooding across the city, the ~ 4 million residents in the path of Alfred got off pretty lightly. Thankfully it was only a Cat 2, not the Cat 4 or 5 they get in North Queensland!

 I’ve got to say I’d be happy to wait another fifty odd years for the next one to hit here!

Cheers.