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The Natural Disaster Thread


RA3236

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I mainly created this thread because Ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie's swung down towards Brisbane and is currently starting a three-day dump of its rain on us (if you haven't heard of Debbie, she's a Category 4 (AUS) cyclone which hit the coast of Queensland on Tuesday at the McKay Area. She's the worst cyclone in Australia since Cyclone Yasi (Category 5), and both were bigger than Cyclone Tracy, which hit Darwin head on and demolished it). Which raises the question, who here has been in a natural disaster before (things like morning storms don't count :wink:)?

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Well.

Here in Scotland, we get nothing. No disasters, no dangerous wildlife, no dangerous temperatures, no droughts, hardly any snow and no floods where I live. In fact, it's just cloudy and rainy all year round. Pretty bleak.

I guess sometimes it's windy...

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Here in the American Southwest, we have droughts, earthquakes, and forest fires. I haven't experienced any really bad 'quakes, but there was one fire that made the mountains look like volcanoes. The light from the fire lit up the smoke. It was like a second sunset that lasted hours. Luckily nobody I know was affected, except by being evacuated. I'm sure you all know about the Califirnia Drought, as well.

The mountains prevent tornadoes, the cold current kills hurricanes, and tge climate is incompatible with snowstorms, at least in the flatlands. Weather isn't really a concern here.

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1 hour ago, legoclone09 said:

Nice that the drought is pretty much over due to the huge amounts of rain in January/February.

You say that, but I'm less than assured. It takes more than a few big rainstorms to replenish aquifers. I don't think we're there yet, even if we can water our lawns again.

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1 hour ago, legoclone09 said:

Here in the south south west we have clouds sometimes and occasional rain. Nothing interesting. Nice that the drought is pretty much over due to the huge amounts of rain in January/February.

That doesn't mean anything really. The section of South East Queensland I live in is still a drought affected area, even with four cyclones heading south in four years and a ****ton of rain from NSW. 1ozVkcA.png

Looks as if Debbie's gone south pretty far. And Sydneys getting hammered.

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7 minutes ago, RA3236 said:

That doesn't mean anything really. The section of South East Queensland I live in is still a drought affected area, even with four cyclones heading south in four years and a ****ton of rain from NSW. 

Looks as if Debbie's gone south pretty far. And Sydneys getting hammered.

Oops, was talking about US.

 

30 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

You say that, but I'm less than assured. It takes more than a few big rainstorms to replenish aquifers. I don't think we're there yet, even if we can water our lawns again.

Yeah, you are right. It should be over soon, though.

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Philippines.

My country is part of the typhoon belt and the Pacific Ring of Fire which means we gets lots of storms and earthquakes every year. I've gone through one the worst typhoons in history, Typhoon Haiyan and survived, so yes, I think that counts. 

Edited by Atlas2342
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17 hours ago, V7 Aerospace said:

Here in Scotland, we get nothing. No disasters, no dangerous wildlife, no dangerous temperatures, no droughts, hardly any snow and no floods where I live. In fact, it's just cloudy and rainy all year round. Pretty bleak.

Both that bleakness and recent political developments I shall not mention could be considered your natural disasters :D

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We get a little bit of just about everything here at some point or another. I've lived through several hurricanes, storm tidal-surge floods, blizzards, forest fires (we just had one last week, a small Pinelands scrub fire, which made the news), small tornadoes (waterspouts, which I've seen out in the ocean and on the bay), and even minor earthquakes. Yes, I said earthquakes. We're not really known for earthquakes here, but we do get them. Most folks don't even notice them. The worst of which I personally experienced was while I was in a hospital in Philly, up on the top floor, back in 2011 or 2012? It had the entire building swaying back and forth... a very eerie feeling and thing to watch out the window.

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5 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Yes, I said earthquakes. We're not really known for earthquakes here, but we do get them. Most folks don't even notice them. The worst of which I personally experienced was while I was in a hospital in Philly, up on the top floor, back in 2011 or 2012? It had the entire building swaying back and forth... a very eerie feeling and thing to watch out the window.

ohhhh.. What floor were you on?

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10 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

ohhhh.. What floor were you on?

Honestly I don't remember. 5th? 7th? 9th? Up there. It was one of the UPenn buildings (University of Pennsylvania, the Perelman cancer center). My attentions were focused elsewhere, a family member. I just happened to be sitting in a chair next to a window in the sun, trying to nap, when the quake hit.

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I used to live for 15 years in the Caribbean Island of St-Martin, from 92 to 07 and experienced many of them, the destruction they engendered and the loss of peoples we used to know.

- Luis, Cat4, October-September 1995. I was to young to keep enough memories of it, apart that my parents were washing me in a basin and the smell of rot that came from ponds of stagnant water all around. Hopefully we got common water restored after 2 weeks and full electricity after a months for everybody.

My dad gives me a lot of picture from this time, he actually was a rescue-diver of the French National Gendarmerie (we did not have Coast Guards equivalents here) and was sent to multiple ships trapped and sinking out of the island. He also took shots of the U.S logistic intervention. They sent Lockheed C-130s from Florida and Puerto-Rico air bases ASAP to carry medicines and foods and even one of the McDonnell Douglas C-17 prototypes (the aircraft entered in service the same year) two times. It probably was an occasion to test it in a particular condition. France used their Transall C-160F based in Guadeloupe and the Gendarmerie's Aerospatiale Alouette III and Ecureuil helicopter to reach the parts of the island without any practicable roads.

One of the picture also depicted an RAF BAe Nimrod. I don't know what it was doing here precisely, furthermore the Commonwealth islands of St-Kitts/Nevis and Antigua/Barbuda were also struck and required help.

The French National Telecommunications service also chartered a lot of repair vehicles onboard an Ilyushin Il-78 and one Antonov An-124 :

75428_1376354547.jpg

We can see the damages to the trees on this picture.

 

- Jose, Cat2, October 1999. I remember it for the flood mull we got all around. It used to block most of the road and destroy a lot of electricity and communications lines.

 

- Lenny, Cat4, November 1999. By far the worst in my memory... the b*stard formed in the Caribbean Sea. Nearly all of the depressions sticking us used to form out of the Western African coast but not here, it just arrived from the East this time and jump from the Category 1 to 4 in less than two days. Its proximity gives way less time to the islands to prepare themselves. Also the weather estimations of the time (from the U.S NOAA like the French National Service) were all erroneous, and it took years for them to admit their failures. But the worst probably was that Lenny, instead of keeping on its way to the West, like any other depression would have done, just slowed down once over Saba/Anguilla, St-Martin/Maarten/St-Barths islands and started to depict a full circle over them. We stayed under rains and winds of 200 km/h (120-25 mph) during a day, 866,6 mm (approx 34.11 inches) were recorded at the Gendarmerie office of Marigot... we never get more than this since.

The loop it made also trapped a lot of peoples navigating at this time. Most of them used to leave the island main bay and go northern to protect their boats as usual but Lenny was so different that it got them way before... more personally we lost a man and most of its crew when they we were struck by the hurricane. Their boat simply was destructed and they disappeared north of the island, near the British and U.S Virgin Islands. The only survivor of the crew was found three days after while he was drifting on a piece of wood coming from the hull. It's actually a British Nimrod crew which patrolled over purely by chance who found him and who guided a ship towards.

 

Image25.jpg

 

These really are the most important we ever have since (without forgetting Hugo). Many others struck us since, but what I remember the most is that, just like for all the others natural disaster the scales used for them still can't reflect their destructive potential. Most of the time the deadliest for us were from Category 3 and 4. The 5 are too fast to stay over us enough, while the Cat 3 use to be the worst being slower and less powerful we could imagine that it will not be as destructive than the 5, but being slower is its main weapon... it will stay over you more longer and drop a more important quantity of water at the same occasion. When we are on the land their winds gust are not the deadliest, but their rain and the flood or landslides they are creating.

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12 hours ago, stibbons said:

I'm in Sydney and yeah, the low from ex-TC Debbie has been dumping an awful lot of water on our heads today.

Last night lost power, had some good 35kt wind gusts according to ABC News, flooded, turned out that Debbie had an eye still, and yeah pretty much stayed indoors and hoped that we didn't lose a tree. Constant thunderstorm warnings from BOM. I'm actually surprised at the fact that "schools are closed for today and tomorrow and businesses are asked to close early". I'm yet to see the amount of damage closer to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, but I'm expecting to find quite a lot of stuff... If it gets that bad down your end I'd recommend staying indoors and keeping the pets inside. You might still get a lot of wind after the clouds pass, as it's still going this morning with not a speck in the sky.

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