And now it's our turn on the west coast.

The Weather Bureau is predicting Cyclone Bianca will swing down toward the south coast of Western Australia tomorrow.
http://www.watoday.com.au/environme...cyclone-turns-up-the-heat-20110128-1a7lj.html
I don't know how much worse a cyclone can be than the storm which ripped across Perth last March. Maybe I'm about to find out.

 

Good luck, Gregoryno6 - hang in there! :major

 

Latest reports are that Bianca might be toning down.
Still, who knows? Nobody in Darwin was ready for Tracy back in 74.
http://www.abc.net.au/nt/stories/s1255740.htm

 

The alert is over. We might get some stiff winds and a storm or two, but Bianca has been downgraded from a cyclone.
That only leaves the heat to contend with. When they kick down the door, they'll find naught but my clothes - flopped around a puddle of mucus.

 

But that's still better than a cyclone though, right? I think the US weather agencies call them hurricanes, and if that's what you have just avoided, then congratulations to you...!

 

That's right Mimsy, cyclones = hurricanes.
What we really need is the rain without the destruction. We may yet get a few points in the gauge.
Flying back from the east coast a few weeks ago I had a bird's eye view of our very empty weirs.

UPDATE - Said rain may be starting any time now. Stiff winds and cloud cover at about 90%.

 

Following on from previous post - Perth did get some fairly decent rain from the remnants of Bianca. Just to show what a sense of humour Mother Nature has, though, a thunderstorm unrelated to the cyclone ripped through a wheat growing town about 70 miles inland the day before Bianca was due and left some serious damage behind.
The latest cyclone to strike Australia's east coast is Yasi, and this one has done something I've never seen before. It's travelled inland as far as Alice Springs, so it's crossed halfway across the continent. It's only rated as a storm now, but to cross that distance, about 2000 miles, it must have some serious puff left in it.