Topic: Tropical Cyclone Hamish : Queensland from March 5 2009

[Colin Maitland]

Cyclone Hamish  intensified to a Cat 4 cyclone sometime around 2.00pm this afternoon. The system is located in the northwestern Coral Sea and at 4:00 pm EST was about 240 kilometres north of Hayman Is and 235 kilometres northeast of Ayr. Hamish is  moving south southeast at 19 kilometres per hour.

The wind gusts near centre of the cyclone are about 260 kilometres per hour, and it has a central pressure of 950 hectoPascals.

Seven National News reported that the low lying Whitsunday Islands have been evacuated. There is a lot of flash flooding around Makay. The QLD premier told Seven News that if need be, compulsory evacuation of people will be enforced. Emergency Service Dept at Kedron in Brisbane, stated that those in the purple zone in Makay, have now been told to move to higher ground and appointed evacuation centers.

One forecaster said that the system" had a possibility it could make its way down to Hervey Bay", so they are keeping a very close eye on the storm.

As I said in a previous post, anything is possible with cyclones, because they are to high extent, unpredictable in their track paths.

Seven news stated the reason for the system to intensify so quickly was due to the warm water off the coast.

I made a trip to the coast today and in all honesty I would have said that the water temp. was around 24-25C.

Seven news stated that the bureau, at this stage did not feel that Hamish will intensify any stronger. Personally I would not be surprised to see Hamish reach Cat 5.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

I read news reports tonight referring to Mackay. That brought back memories of the fears of a major cyclone hitting the region with a significant storm surge and the amount of development that has occurred since other major tropical clones had hit the region. Most of the low lying land from memory in this particular documentary seemed to be in the 1 to 2 metres above sea level and could easily sustain flooding with a storm surge.

Just some thoughts.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Richary]

This is going to be nasty if it moves onto the coast before it subsides. A very well defined eye on the 1km resolution satellite.

Looks like Flinders Reef might have copped the eye as well, 154kph at 1pm from ESE, dropped to 50, then back to 148 kph at 3pm from WSW. Shame it didn't report gusts during those times, pressure down to 956.

[Antonio (stormboy)]

tropical cyclone Hamish has reached an extreme of cat 5

[jab_au]

Details of Severe Tropical Cyclone Hamish at 10:00 pm EST:
.Centre located near...... 18.5 degrees South 149.3 degrees East
.Location accuracy........ within 19 kilometres
.Recent movement.......... towards the southeast at 17 kilometres per hour
.Wind gusts near centre... 295 kilometres per hour
.Severity category........ 5
.Central pressure......... 930 hectoPascals

Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQP0005.txt

Looks like it's intensifying.

[Colin Maitland]

Since the last post by Jab au, Cyclone Hamish has intensified.
Data sourced from BOM now shows Hamish to be packing wind gusts of up to 295 km/h. He is currently 145 km northeast of Hayman Island  and 230 km northeast of Mackay. He has a centre of 925 HPa.and is moving southeast at 17 Km/h.

The Bureau has adviced people from Bunderberg to Tewantin, which is just over an hour drive from my place, and where my sister has a house, to start considering the precautions or actions needed if the system continues to be a threat to them. 

For the latest track map, http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ65002.shtml

I was just reading the paper and the track map showed Hamish to be downgraded to a Cat 3 some time Monday, but the latest is only a downgrade to cat 4.
The paper is calling it "a once in a hundred year storm", but no offence, my wife and I commented on how many "once in a hundred year storm" we have seen, read about and sat through over the last 8 years.

[James Calder]

Also comletely new to this site. I understand cyclones are pretty unpredictable, however maybe you might want to look at this site.
 http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast.php?type=rain&region=seaussie&noofdays=7

Shows Hamish following the coast down as far as Fraser island before heading east as it looses a bit of steam.

[Richary]

I too was thinking about Fraser Island (being a 4WDer) and wondering how many people would be camped on the island at any one time. And how long it would take to evacuate the place if needed. I'm not sure of the capacity of the ferry.

With the speed this thing is moving they would want to start pretty quickly.

A tent in a cyclone is probably not the best place to be.

Also, something severely out of kilter with the 1km sat images this morning. On the map the cyclone is now off the coast of PNG!

[Michael Bath]

Yeah, the YOKO 1km VIS are hopeless atm. Here's one sourced from Weatherzone.
The forecast track maps and intensities from BoM and JTWC are quite similar with a Hervey Bay / Fraser Island target for Hamish.

[Colin Maitland]

Just spoke to my sister in Tewantin QLD, she received EWN this morning at 5.00am with 1st warnings to start taking precautionary actions

They have a house on the lake.

She was saying it was very still this morning with a red sky.

In Scotland, where my parents come from, the local fishing villages had a saying, and I know there are many versions out there, it was

Red sky at night, sailors delight.
Red sky in Morning sailors be warned.

She said that the winds have picked up in the last hour or so. They are still well down on the track map, but it is creeping ever so closer to them.

As for the people on Fraser Island, the QLD premier has compulsory evacuations in place, and as it comes to there cut off point,or when they deem it time to take action, before it has reached a critical stage they will enforce the evacuations of campers of Fraser Island.

At this stage they are not playing any games with the severity of Hamish. Her management of this potential disaster will be scrutinisingly watched by all. She seems with the Emergency Dept up here, to have a good grasp of what is happening.

[Colin Maitland]

Creal Reef at 1.30pm Sunday EST must be in the eye of the cyclone, the stats obtained from BOM are below

They have downgraded Hamish to a CAt 4 sytem now, and are in the motion of evacuating Fraser Island.

It is very hard to cut and paste tables so they line up.

A technique is to do a print screen and then paste into a graphics program, cut out the section you want, reduce colour depth and save as png.


  Thanks for helping  Michael and Jimmy, I got into a bit of a mess with the table,

[Richary]

I was just looking at that one. I suspect the anenometer has been knocked off it's perch as it certainly isn't in the eye at the moment. Actually the whole site is now over an hour behind on updates so the rest of it may have gone down as well.

[Michael Bath]

Creal Reef (ENE of Mackay) and also Flinders Reef (NE of Townsville) which took a direct hit from Hamish yesterday afternoon (7th) are attached.

Latest GFS has the TC not making landfall as per JTWC, but weakening then staying off the South Queensland coast for a few days as the high consolidates in the Tasman Sea. None of the model output has much rain south of the border.

[Steven]

Wind has definitely picked up in the last several hours and the clouds have kicked in, but for us here it's a cruel waiting game. In the midst of all this, this anxiousness has aroused confusion because some people seem a bit uncertain whether this system will make a direct hit or just do a sideswipe (and thus seem a bit unwilling to face up to the fact that they may have to prepare for the worst). Either way I think I'll wait tomorrow before making any final preparations. Only when the warnings are issued for my area.

I do hope the BoM are monitoring this closely and act accordingly when danger looms.

[Richary]

I am wondering if someone can recall cyclones with a similar track and where they decided to make landfall (if they did).

My memory brought back one from 1981 when I lived near Lismore and if it had continued on it's original track it could have hit us after crossing the coast near Brisbane/Gold Coast. Luckily for us it hung a turn the night before and went inland near Maryborough - though wikipedia records damage from the Gold Coast to Sunshine Coast. But that one had tracked in from the Fiji direction and not run down the Qld coast. We had got to the stage of starting to get loose iron etc under cover (living on a farm at the time).

Unusual path I can see here, though as it moves south I assume the easterly winds from the high centred over Tas (that is bringing onshore winds and showers to Sydney) will start to push it back towards the coast.