As I write this week’s essay there is significant uncertainty as Tropical Cyclone Alfred bares down on us within the next 24 hours.  Hence, I’m posting this week’s essay now given the uncertainty of the situation.

Our community, Newport is directly in its path and likely to make landfall around 4:00 am Friday morning (AEST).  Now when I say directly in its path, the Redcliffe Peninsula will be the location of the eye.  Of course, this uncertainty has brought a significant amount of panic buying to the local community with empty shelves and frustrated shoppers in abundance.

Fortunately, for us we’ve both weathered cyclones (when I lived in Darwin) and for Judy as she lived through Super Storm Sandy when it hit Freeport on Long Island (US) back in October 2012 and her mum and dad’s place was under 12+ feet of water…

Even as I sit here and write this the wind has picked up significantly with it beginning to come in stronger and stronger gusts.  The weather bureau is predicting somewhere between 500 – 900 mm of rain (20 – 36 inches) in the next 24 hours and so flooding is a real concern.

I realize that at the moment it’s only classed as a category 2, but here in the Greater Brisbane area this is the first cyclone to hit this part of Australia in more than 50 years.   Unfortunately, large segments of Brisbane’s suburbs are prone to flooding and in fact the last major flood event in Brisbane was only

Generally, a category 2 will bring significant rain and wind (less than 160 kph / 100 mph) for 12-24 hours of so.  Of course, the other main uncertainty is the storm surge from the ocean, especially given that we live on a quay surrounded by ocean.

Admittedly, the tide has been higher than normal the last two days, however our place is situated 5 meters (16 feet) above the normal high tide mark, so we haven’t been asked to evacuate as many of the neighbouring suburbs have been.

Clearly, we may end up as an island after the storm but only for a short while.  I guess the biggest uncertainty is how long the power will be off and the amount of damage from flying debris we’ll have to contend with.

Trust me, we’ve made our house as cyclone proof as we can and feel confident that we’ll be able to successfully ride out the storm.  I went to the local super market early in the week and secured tinned supplies and dry goods to get us through including bottled water.

Later today as an additional precaution we’ll be filling our bathtub to enable us to flush out toilet and potentially use it to have a wipe down with a cloth instead of a shower.

The level of uncertainty is palpable in the community with sandbag stations overwhelmed with 100’s of people lined up to get these scarce resources, and not a lot left in terms of canned food in the local stores.  To be fair, the local council has done a fabulous job in mobilizing all of the resources available to them, along with the state and federal governments.

So, now the reality is that it’s a waiting game…   Cyclone Alfred has slowed instead of accelerating as it closes in our coastline, and as with most weather-related storms is still a little unpredictable in terms of the speed, intensity, direction or location that it will finally come ashore.

All of the local businesses have either closed today or will do so shortly, so we’re all just holding our collective breathe to see what will transpire in the next 24 – 48 hours.

Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Until next week

Ciao!

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