Topic: Tropical Cyclone Hamish : Queensland from March 5 2009

[Colin Maitland]

I don't know at this stage whether this is a typographical error, misquote or a slip of the tongue, but it was in the article "Search for fishermen may be scaled down."   http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/12/2513737.htm
Quoting from the article posted approx 2 hours ago, it stated regarding ex tropical cyclone Hamish,:

{Hamish weakens

The weather bureau says Cyclone Hamish has now weakened to a tropical low.

The storm reached category 5 over the weekend, but has remained offshore.

The bureau says the low is sitting about 300 kilometres north-east of Gladstone and will continue to weaken as it moves south along the coast.

Forecaster David Grant says fierce winds and rough seas should ease in the next 24 hours.

"We've seen mean winds getting up to around 70 or 80 kilometres an hour, particularly around the islands," he said.

"The coastlines ocean swells are getting up to around three, sometimes four metres."}

All reports, and track map from 11.00 pm last night, has Hamish moving Northwest at this stage, but I was observing the animated WZ sat pictures, and it shows that the cloud close to the coast is moving down from the north. Further out to sea the Tasman high is pushing everything North. I wonder if Ex Hamish, now a tropical low and weakening, is starting to be forced back down the coast. If this is so, will he turn  into a rain depression, possible flooding for Northcoast and Brisbane,  or is it just an error in the report.  Time will tell.

[Colin Maitland]

On Wednesday morning, the Pacific Adventurer, registered in Hong Kong, sailed straight into cyclone Hamish's destructive  path, near North Stradbroke Island. It is reported that this ship encountered a 9 M swell, the wave rider buoys, were registering 4.7 M swell. The ship lost 31 containers of fertilizer overboard. The ships hull was ruptured and 31 tonnes of oil spewed out into the ocean.

The following is quote from ABC article this morning, it states

{Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has declared Moreton Island, Bribie Island and southern parts of the Sunshine Coast disaster zones after a massive oil spill.

Sixty kilometres of coastline is covered in the slick, which came from the Pacific Adventurer after it was damaged earlier this week in rough seas whipped up by cyclone Hamish.}

Looking at the news coverage and the posted photos, it is a mess out there. There is a lot of wild life that has been affected. As regards the ammonium Nitrate, one expert said that the only damage this will cause is that the kelp will be 30 feet long instead of 6 feet. Is he joking or what?

They do not know if all the containers have sunk, this is a major danger to water craft, if you have seen what happens, a lot of these containers sit just below the water line and you don't know they are there until you have hit one.

Colin

[Richary]

Tonight's news is reporting 100,000 litres of oil spoll (not sure how many tons that equates to). But they did also say the ship's captain may have initially understated the loss. The environmental damage is going to be very nasty looking at the rivers etc which are important breeding grounds for wildlife (let alone the unsightly much on the beaches).

Certainly looks very messy and surprised my sister in NZ hasn't had a call from them to come over - she works for Maritime NZ as an environmental scientist and spends here time flying around the world for conferences on how to deal with these things.