Cyclone incoming!

G'day folks,

Just thought I'd post this picture. Yep, that's right, Karratha is where I live. Just thought I'd fire off a post and wish all Wetpixeler a happy New Year. Now I'm off to evacuate to higher ground (living near the ocean is fun, except when you're about to be run over by a Category 4 cylone!)

Cheers,

Whitey

We're watching it too...thankfully it isn't a four...yet...hopefully it won't be a huge mess!

Today is still nice and the water is good, but there are big black thunderheads forming over the Gulf...

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60281.shtml here's the thread map/track if anyone wants to have a look!

Good luck

Well I'm all happily evacuated to a different house and back on line now with my laptop. Latest track forecast suggests it's going to miss us to the west. That first forecast certainly got my attention - a direct hit on Karratha with a category 4 cyclone would make a hell of a mess I think. It's also going to make landfall at high tide around 6-8pm, and the resulting risk of storm surge is why the authorities were performing evacuations in my street.

Not a good diving day...

And we just lost the power as I've been typing this! I've just been told I've got to conserve the battery on the laptop, so no more wetpixel surfing for a while.

Cheers,

Rob

Good luck you guys, Cyclones are never a good thing...

Thanks guys,

It's all relatively good here in Karratha, there won't be the damage or flooding we were expecting earlier today I reckon. It was all sort of exciting being evacuated by the fire brigade - haven't done that before! Looks to me like Clare won't turn out to be as strong as expected (260kph winds haven't eventuated), and the eye wall will miss us unless the cyclone does a fairly radical left turn.

Despite being weaker than predicted, it's still a direct hit on the local diving area - the Dampier Archipelago. That and the freshwater runoff won't do the reef any favours, and viz is likely to be poor for a while. Eye wall is said by the Bureau of Meteorology to be hitting the town of Dampier right now, so it'll be interesting to see in the morning how that's turned out.

Good luck and stay safe.

James