It's a bit bloody wet in Qld!

[Mad Aussie]

Haven't heard from Antz for ages but he lives up on a mountain and there's no chance of a landslide getting him where he is so I'm sure he's just fine.

Haven't heard anything about an earthquake Iggy ... and we are Aussies ... those horsemen would get their asses kicked if they bothered us right now

[Iguanasan]

Strong quake hits New Caledonia islands in Pacific

"The remote chain is about 1,000 miles (1,800 kilometers) east of the Australian city of Brisbane." Pretty far away but had it triggered an tsunami since it was under water it could have added to the chaos.

Glad to hear you guys will take care of business. Hopefully, then, they show up there first. In Canada we would probably just apologize to them

[Mad Aussie]

It took Australians over 50 years to apologize to their own people!

Thankfully tsunami's are rare around here ... but then ... so is what we are going through I guess.

It's interesting in hindsight. Many of you will remember me mentioning it has been raining a lot over the past couple of months ... if I only knew where it would lead.

[Mad Aussie]

Seems poor Queensland hasn't fiished it's battle with the weather yet.

Yesterday we had a Cyclone (Hurricane) hit the far north cities but it wasn't a big one. Only Cat 2. However, another huge Cyclone is bearing down on the same area and expected to hit within a day or so. This one was out by Fiji only yesterday, it's fast! It's also big. 500 km across with a 100 km eye, Cat 4 by the time it hits the coast of Queensland and expected to rival or be bigger than any Cyclone we've seen hit Queensland before.

The people up there were still recovering from the floods ... then cyclone Anthony yesterday and now Cyclone Yasi tomorrow. Those poor people.

Code red as Cyclone Yasi bears down | Latest news on the Queensland Floods | News.com.au

We might get some residue rain ad wind from this but I think it's probably unlikely this far south in the state. The area it will make landfall is about 12 hrs drive from us at least.

[Mad Aussie]

Cyclone Yasi has exceeded all early predictions to be come the biggest cyclone/hurricane to hit Australia. It's still predicted to hit the coast at Cairns in far nth Qld at around 10pm tonight ... that's about 6 hrs from now as I type this.

The system itself stretches almost the full length of the Qld coast and we are now expected to see some signs of it soon. This morning they had 50 ambulances lined up at the brisbane airport as the hospital and aged care patients were brought in after evacuation from the strike zone. This is looking like a Katrina sized event now.

[Iguanasan]

Cyclone Yasi has exceeded all early predictions to be come the biggest cyclone/hurricane to hit Australia. It's still predicted to hit the coast at Cairns in far nth Qld at around 10pm tonight ... that's about 6 hrs from now as I type this.

The system itself stretches almost the full length of the Qld coast and we are now expected to see some signs of it soon. This morning they had 50 ambulances lined up at the brisbane airport as the hospital and aged care patients were brought in after evacuation from the strike zone. This is looking like a Katrina sized event now.

That means it's hitting about now. Stay safe!

[Mad Aussie]

I was never in danger. In terms of distance ... this thing was hitting Seatle Washington while I was enjoying the sun on the bottom of the Baja Penninsula!

It did hit land around midnight with winds of 280 kph and waves up to 9 1/2 metres high. The eye of the storm was 100 kms wide, Katrina's eye was 60 km. Amazingly though, (it's only about 5.45am as I type) there are no reports of deaths yet and even though it's still dark up there, they are struggling to find any real damage. When the day lightens up they might find more as we haven't seen footage from exactly where the cyclone hit yet.

It's now 150 km inland and down to cat 3 but expected to reach Mt Isa township, some 900 km inland.

We wait to see.