Recent weather anomolies

[forumposting253]

Re:

here has long been speculation that the PTB (Powers That Be) have had some had in the extreme weather the entire world is getting.

[noises]

hi mate can you posts links for this brother so i can verify?

Cyclone Yasi - no deaths, much destruction | News | Pbo

Cyclone Yasi downgraded; no deaths in Queensland | AHN

there's two people missing who haven't been accounted for, but bare in mind nearly 70% of the population ran for cover, and now there's no mobile phone coverage across the effected coastal areas, so there's a good chance the two missing people sheltered with friends elsewhere and just can't find a way to contact anyone. Finger crossed, anyway. I love the idea there being a net gain of human life after such a potentially devastating cyclone.

By the way, if you're moved to contribute to the recovery effort, my advice would be direct any donations to the Red Cross, they're always the first NGO to focus on the quality of life for people effected by natural disasters. I'll be volunteering with them as of today.

Had a call from my landlord, no damage and no flooding at my place (I evacuated inland,) and the power is back on already But I'm not going home. I'm going in as a volunteer with the red cross to help people who no longer have homes.

[Mad Scientist]

Had a call from my landlord, no damage and no flooding at my place (I evacuated inland,) and the power is back on already But I'm not going home. I'm going in as a volunteer with the red cross to help people who no longer have homes.

That is good news, but somehow that doesn't surprise me.

Those pictures are amazing, a house literally broke in two.

But you have to stop offending the rain gods.

[noises]

But you have to stop offending the rain gods.

with a sense of humor like that, you could just about live here. (saw a sign today heading back towards town, "so long Yasi, and thanks for the blowjob." crazy, carved from granite, stoic as a general, but funny as all get out are the people around here. Must be something in the water.

Humor is so important to resolving the stress of an event like this. Nobody knows where it will hit until it hits, literally everyone along 600km of coastline spent two days preparing for a direct hit, both in terms of readying their properties and their supplies for afterwards, and building up emotional tension from just sheer worry.

The best way, and I know from experience, to release all that stress and tension if your place didn't get hit, is to get out with an organised charity and work (pardon french) bloody hard from sunup to sunset helping those who were not as fortunate as yourself.

Sure, you release your own tensions with the physical work and the knowledge that you're bringing tears of gratitude to the eyes of people who've lost everything is pretty special too, but more importantly, it gets things back to normal faster for the worst hit areas, and it lets those people know they're not alone, it builds real faith and friendship in the community.

On a more sombre note, response teams have found the body of a man who asphixiated in his home during the cyclone. He had been running a diesel generator inside the small room he took shelter in, and died from the fumes.
We're all quite upset, that such easily preventable death was the only casualty from such a destructive event is truly tragic in every sense of the word, especially as the man's house survived intact. He really, truly, didn't have to die. That's what makes it so sad, you know?

I just want to stress one thing, the only reason we all survived is because we all listened to the evacuation orders when they were given, and we all prepared accordingly using information that was freely and widely available. The fact everyone survived the destructive force of the cyclone is a great story, but the moral of the story is what should be highlighted. In times of natural disaster, follow the directions of emergency services, police and local government. Don't be a hero, and don't think you're bulletproof.

And yeah, when it's all over, be a dude (or dudette) and get involved in showing the love to those who need help the most.

World needs more angels imo.

[noises]

[noises]

So glad people are safe.

Looks like some of those trees got a bad deal

You haven't seen the half of it! Second time for me, seeing km after km of what was lush, tropical rainforest now stripped back to just trunks with te tops blown off them. All the leaves and branches that were broken of have been blown tens of km inland. so entire mountainsides look like they've been napalmed bare. It's just, awe inspiring. You can't imagine it, and then you see it, and you can't believe it.

By the way, the whole region THRIVES on tourism. in about 3 or 4 weeks it will be safe to visit the worst effected areas and see these bare, broken mountains in their completely denuded state. And we could really use the jumpstart to our economies. Then, in about two years or so, you can come back and see the same hills once again completely covered with thick, impenetrable tropical jungles and lush, verdant rainforests.

The only thing that bounces back from cyclone damage faster than the rainforests are the people who live here .

[noises]

there's two people missing who haven't been accounted for, but bare in mind nearly 70% of the population ran for cover, and now there's no mobile phone coverage across the effected coastal areas, so there's a good chance the two missing people sheltered with friends elsewhere and just can't find a way to contact anyone. Finger crossed, anyway.

Who else likes happy endings?
#TCYasi Two missing men located near Cardwell | Facebook

[noises]

I'm in the worst effected areas today getting photos and footage. Unbelievable destruction, entire mountainsides that last week were covered in thick rainforest without a leaf left on them today. acre after acre of foot-high stumps of banana trees. Beaches with every coconut palm stripped of leaves with the trunks torn out of the ground and thrown as if by a giant having a tantrum. I swear, any one of these pictures could go into the dictionary beside the word "denuded."

eg

[noises]

So far I haven't seen any pockets of rainforest that haven'y been stripped bare. At least not arouynd mission beach, tully heads, bingil bay... these areas are significant because most of the 1500 cassowaries that live in the world live in those rainforests. The ones who survived the cyclone, however many that is, are going to have a really hard time finding food. I just can't see how they could survive until their forests recover. I expected there to be little glades and hollows that survived, but nothing has. So either there'll be an explosion of human interactions (with the most dangerous bird in the world,) or they'll simply starve to death. It's hard to process that kind of loss.

[ashtweth]

I'd like to see a REPLANT program of the tree's more reports on the wild life devastation too, dont forget you need birds and bees or the planet dies.

Ash

[noises]

I'd like to see a REPLANT program of the tree's more reports on the wild life devastation too, dont forget you need birds and bees or the planet dies.

Ash

Thanks for caring, man. Of all the posters here I suspect you'd probably best understand how many locals feel about our environment up here, it's not just our backyard, it's one of our great natural treasures.

We've seen how rainforests come back after a cyclone. takes about 18 months to 2 years, and you wouldn't know an area had been hit by a cyclone. The habitat can and will recover given time. In fact it's best not to go in and replant, for risk of interfering with the natural recovery. All those trunks are viable, those trees will mostly live, and they provide the vertical structure for teh forest, and protection for the undergrowth. To regrow them from a sapling you're looking at about 100 years for the medium sized ones. So the trees and plants part of the equation, we're not so worried about.

However animals that inhabit the rainforest, that's a different story. 5 years ago after cyclone Larry, as much as 1/3 of the Cassowary population was wiped out. They have such specific environmental needs, it's not just a case of them being able to move 80km along the coastline to find food, because their habitat is only found in small pockets, and most of those in one shire (county to you guys in the USA,) area.

They have about 10 to 14 days of food left on the forest floor, but once that rots, these incredibly rare birds will have nothing to eat until the forests recover and start fruiting again. That's about two years away. Interim feeding stations set up after the last cyclone have already been re-opened, but if we lose 1/3 of the remaining population, we're talking less than a thousand cassowaries left in the wild. That's the real environmental concern, most other species survive outside the worst effected area. But that area was THE hub of the existing Cassowary population. The idea that places like cape tribulation or kuranda may now have a greater population than the cassowary coast is unthinkable.

It's hard to show the scope of the destruction, but compare what the region looked like before the cyclone

YouTube - Driving through tropical rainforest

with what it looks like after the cyclone (jump to about 2:15)

YouTube - Yasi damage



Not that I want to go spruiking any charity over another, or imply any one is better than another, but there are ways to give financial aid to the rescue mission enacted to keep the cassowaries fed for the next two years.
Cyclone Yasi Cassowary Appeal - Bob Irwin and Rainforest Rescue

I'll be going back in over the coming days to film more habitat damage (second video is my footage.) But rest assured it's mostly for comparison in a couple of years, when those same rainforests between Tully and the coast are green, growing places again.

[noises]

Cassowary - A simple pronunciation guide.
Ca (as in CAp) sso (as in SO endangered) wary
(as in what you would be wise to be around a 2m tall bird with an attitude problem and an eight inch long dagger for a middle toe.)



They say birds are descended from dinosaurs, did you know that? Well, some more obviously so than others. But we love them.

[noises]

We've seen how rainforests come back after a cyclone. takes about 18 months to 2 years, and you wouldn't know an area had been hit by a cyclone. So the trees part of the equation, we're not so worried about. the habitat can and will recover given time.

It's hard to believe but a lot of the root structures survive, and a rained in mulch protects the fragile rainforest topsoil. As soon as the sun comes out, the ground starts to steam, and in the warm, bright tropical sunlight, bamboo can grow up to an inch a day. It doesn't take more than about a month for plants that made up the canopy structure to have crowned with new foliage, and begun to recover. Shreds of vines from the vine jungles will resprout, and once the upper and mid canopy is regrowing (12 to 18 months) regrowth in the undergrowth and floor begins from spores, rhizomes and seeds left in the mud. It's an incredible system. But log out those canopy builders, or scrape off those few inches of topsoil, and the rainforest won't recover naturally. At least, not in your grandchildren's lifetimes.

Two things about cyclone damage and rainforests keenly interest me. One is, the timing of the cyclone season, the wet season, being when you simply cannot control or restrain plant growth here by any non mechanical means. It is no accident the climate is like a hothouse (30+ degrees, 95%+ humdity,) because the plants just explode with regrowth after a bit of sun. The other is the environment's incredible resilience in the face of natural destruction, compared to the complete and total destruction man can bring with his axes, saws, tractors and chains.

Well dress me in cotton and call me a hippy. I make no apologies for loving my land Don't think we love it because it's beautiful, you'd have that backwards. It's beautiful because we love it.

[ashtweth]

Cassowary - A simple pronunciation guide.
Ca (as in CAp) sso (as in SO endangered) wary
(as in what you would be wise to be around a 2m tall bird with an attitude problem and an eight inch long dagger for a middle toe.)



They say birds are descended from dinosaurs, did you know that? Well, some more obviously so than others. But we love them.

Fungi was around b4 dinosaurs
Fungi can make you trip or there are medicinal Fungi

[Aaron]

8.8 Earthquake Hits Japan

was 8.8 but upgraded to 8.9

Magnitude 8.9 - NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

8.9 makes it the 7th strongest recorded earthquakes in history that
was recorded - this isn't weather necessarily but is certainly in the
"earth changes" category. Was off the coast east of Sendai which
is a couple hundred miles NE of Tokyo. But in Tokyo, cars fell off bridges
into the water, etc... that's a wiki reference - not my favorite but handy.

1 01960-05-22May 22, 1960 Valdivia, Chile 1960 Valdivia earthquake 9.5 2 01964-03-27March 27, 1964 Prince William Sound, USA 1964 Alaska earthquake 9.2 3 02004-12-26December 26, 2004 Sumatra, Indonesia 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake 9.1 4 01952-11-04November 4, 1952 Kamchatka, Russia (then USSR) Kamchatka earthquakes 9.0 [1] 4 01868-08-13August 13, 1868 Arica, Chile (then Peru) 1868 Arica earthquake 9.0 [2] 4 01700-01-26January 26, 1700 Cascadia subduction zone, Canada and USA 1700 Cascadia earthquake 9.0















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Look at the frequencies and clusters: