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The city of Darwin, Australia will be spared the worst of Cyclone Monica — until recently, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded on planet Earth — thanks to an unexpected left-hand turn and early landfall. Monica, which had been expected to track briefly over the Cobourg Peninsula and then re-emerge over water en route to the city of 100,000, instead came ashore well east of the peninsula, slamming into a sparsely populated area west of Maningrida, and is now proceeding over land, weakening as she goes. The Storm Track has more, including a satellite image of the monster storm at landfall:
As you can see, she looks considerably weaker now:
It now seems almost certain that Monica will not re-emerge over water until she is well past Darwin, meaning her closest approach to the city will be as a shadow of her former self. The current forecast calls for a “Category 2″ Monica at closest approach to Darwin, which actually means a strong tropical storm — not even a hurricane — on the American scale. (See explanation here.) The latest forecast track is below:
If you compare that to last night’s forecast, you can see what a drastic change this is.
Monica’s left-hand turn, sparing Darwin the worst, is somewhat reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina’s right-hand turn, which spared New Orleans the worst (preventing a much higher death toll and more severe and rapid flooding). Of course, Katrina’s turn was much more last-minute, and thus New Orleans still got hit quite hard. In this case, if the current forecast holds, Monica won’t be much of a problem at all for Darwin.
Phew.
P.S. Dr. Jeff Masters has more, including an awesome image of Monica at its peak intensity — 879 mb of pressure, making her the most intense cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. She weakened a bit before landfall, though, and probably came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale (still a Category 5 on the Australian scale).
P.P.S. After the jump, an animated GIF microwave image of Monica making landfall. She appears to have been weakening significantly even as she was moving ashore. (It’s a 6.4 MB image, so be patient; it’ll take a while to load. You can download it by right-clicking here.
Via MIMIC, a microwave image of Cyclone Monica.
The minimum central pressure in Tropical Cyclone Monica, a Category 5 monster bearing down on Darwin and surrounding areas in Australia, dropped at least to 879 mb earlier tonight, making it stronger than Hurricane Wilma — the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin — and nearly as strong as Supertyphoon Tip, whose 870 mb barometric pressure stands as the lowest ever recorded on Earth’s surface. Some commenters on Dr. Jeff Masters’s blog believe Monica may have matched or surpassed Tip, pointing to satellite estimates that show a pressure of 868 or 869 mb. As The Storm Track puts it: “If the satellite estimates are true, Monica has become the most intense storm ever recorded in the entire world. However, in this area the estimates tend to be about 10 mb too strong.” It won’t break the “lowest pressure ever recorded” mark anyway, since they don’t have reconaissance airplanes in Australia, so all of these pressure readings are actually estimates based on satellite views, not direct observations. But regardless, this is clearly one of the most intense storms ever witnessed by modern human eyes anywhere on planet Earth.
That said, satellite views — and observations by the aforementioned commenters — suggest that Monica has weakened slightly in the last few hours, perhaps because of an eyewall replacement cycle and/or the diurnal minimum. But of course, “weakened” is a relative term. This is absolutely a monster storm. The big question is how much more it will weaken before it reaches the Darwin area, and that depends largely on its exact track over the sparsely populated Cobourg Peninsula. The more time it spends over land, the more it will weaken, of course. (Then again, as Alan Sullivan notes, it’s been doing a remarkable job of maintaining its intensity and perfect symmetry even though about one-third of the circulation is already ashore!) Here’s a look at the current official track:
It should be noted, by the way, that Australian hurricane “categories” are different from the Saffir-Simpson Scale that we’re used to; Wikipedia explains. But Monica is a Category 5 by any measure.
Here’s a good page for news about the cyclone. Among other things, the events in Darwin for Anzac Day — “Australia’s biggest day” — have been prudently cancelled as Monica approaches. (Hat tip: Aussie commenter Melanie Dickson, who, incidentally, has been granted guestblogging privileges and may be filing reports as BrendanLoy.com’s official Australia Correspondent soon.)
Previous post here.
The population of Darwin is just over 100,000, by the way. One of those 100,000 is this blogger. More Australia blogs here. Here is a webcam of Darwin Harbor.
Relevant historical note: Darwin was virtually flattened in 1974 by Cyclone Tracy, which destroyed 70% of the city’s buildings, killed 71 people and left 20,000 homeless. “Most of Darwin’s population was evacuated to Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice Springs and Sydney, and many never returned to Darwin,” according to Wikipedia — a scenario that sounds eerily similar to what we’re seeing in this country with Katrina.
As it happens, Tracy was physical the smallest tropical cyclone in recorded history, in terms of the geographic size of the wind field; Tip was the largest. So it’s sort of odd that Monica is, in different ways, competing with both of those two storms for a place in history.
After the jump, an incredible animated GIF image (12.6 MB, so it’ll take a while to load) of microwave imagery of Monica over the last 48 hours. (Source: MIMIC.)
Last night, my brother-in-law Casey was in attendance at Game 1 of the Sabres-Flyers NHL playoff series, a double-overtime thriller that the Buffalo News described as “an instant classic that will be talked about for years to come” and “a rollicking contest that included numerous highlight-reel plays, miracle saves, bouncing pucks with open nets and perhaps the most sensational open-ice hit you can hope to see.” Oh yeah, and the home team won, 3-2, to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. (LET’S GO, BUFFALO!) Casey has a post on his blog about the “high honor and distinct privilege” of being at the game.
For Casey, this is perhaps a bit of redemption for missing another “instant classic” just over six months ago. He was originally planning to attend the USC-Notre Dame game last October 15, and I was in the process of trying to get him tickets, when he changed his mind because he desperately needed to study. (Casey is a Ph.D. student in finance at the University of Rochester. He studies a lot.) After watching the incredible drama of that game — one of the greatest in college football history — on TV instead of in person, he concluded that, in retrospect, the only thing that could possibly have justified his decision to opt out of attending would have been his own death. Heh.
Well, last night’s game may not have been one of the greatest in hockey history, but it certainly was memorable. And this time, it was me and Becky who were watching on TV while Casey and his friend Steve experienced firsthand the awesomeness of being surrounded by crowd noise “so loud that my ears would just sort of crack, unable to register anything beyond a certain decibel level.”
That said, we had a great time watching the game, too, albeit not in person. After meeting up with Casey and Steve for chicken wings and beer at Anchor Bar, we went to Marissa’s house (Marissa is one of Becky’s SHA girls) and watched the game on a giant plasma TV in her basement. The atmosphere there was slightly less intense than at HSBC Arena, and the crowd noise slightly less extreme, but it was certainly very fun to watch such a great Sabres game with a bunch of crazy Buffalonians. Needless to say, overtime was very suspenseful and tense, and we all went completely nuts when Buffalo finally won the game.
Actually, you could argue that “completely nuts” is something of an understatement. You see, it so happens that Marissa lives down the street from Sabres center Daniel Briere, and sometime during the second period, with Buffalo nursing a 2-0 lead, someone joked that, if they hold on to win, we should go to Briere’s house after the game and leave a congratulatory sign on his door. I doubt this would actually have happened if the game had ended less dramatically — but when it went to double overtime, and then Briere scored the winning goal, the stalk-Briere plan obviously gained unstoppable momentum, Marissa’s objections notwithstanding. :) So, within minutes after the game ended, Kristy made a sign, and a half-dozen of us — laboring under various degrees of inebriation — ambled down the street, looking for Briere’s house. It took us a while to confirm exactly which one it was (because Marissa wasn’t with us), but ultimately we found the right one, and left him a bilingual greeting:
I hope he appreciated our sign. We certainly appreciated his goal! :)
After the game, while Casey and Steve were making their way down to Chippewa Street, the party at Marissa’s house continued unabated, albeit with less rythmic horn-honking and more of this sort of thing:
And also this sort of thing:
Heh. That juggling guy ain’t got nothin’ on me! (The sad thing is, I was pretty much sober when the above video was shot…)
More photos of our time in Buffalo here and here. The first page is mostly pictures from the Great Big Sea concert; the second page is mostly us hanging out with the SHA girls.
Oh yeah, and I got some work done this weekend too. Not a ton, but some. Admittedly, going to Buffalo for five days, two weeks before finals, fits in pretty well with thebeef’s comment about “incredibly bad and unheard of choices” that make me “the ‘weather nerd’ in the NYT that we all love to read on a daily basis”… heh. It was totally worth it, though. Now comes crunch time. Tomorrow, I have decided, will be the most productive day of my life. :)
P.S. There is one other bit of news from the Buffalo trip that I’ll be posting about eventually. Stay tuned.
P.P.S. This is the Sabres’ first trip to the playoffs since 2001, which means the last two consecutive Buffalo playoff games have been attended by at least one member of the Zak family. Becky, her parents and I were at Game 7 of the Sabres-Penguins series in ‘01, which Pittsburgh won — coincidentally enough, also 3-2 in overtime. It’s the only NHL game I’ve ever attended, and it eliminated the Sabres from the playoffs, to which they would not return until last night.
UPDATE You can download a video of the final play, with the radio call by the legendary Rick Jeanneret, here. (Hat tip: In da Buff, via BFLOBLOG.) And you can view that “sensational open-ice hit” here.
Proving once again that Australia is the new Florida, Cyclone Monica is threatening to make a second landfall — this time as a Category 5 cyclone. The Australian categories are a bit different than the ones we’re used to, and Monica would actually be a Category 4 if it were in the Atlantic, with 144 mph sustained winds. But that’s plenty bad enough — “the same intensity level observed in a strong category 4 hurricane like Charley, and stronger than Katrina and Rita were at landfall.”
Cyclone Monica this morning, just before hitting the Wessel Islands.
UPDATE, 1:45 PM: Holy cow, it keeps getting worse and worse:
This situation continues to deteriorate along the north coast of Australia. It is hard to imagine a worse situation in this area as Australian cyclones almost never reach this strength. Monica is currently much stronger than 1974’s Cyclone Tracy which is the benchmark storm for the area. As far as I can tell, Monica may be the most intense cyclone to ever impact the region or even Australia. However, records are hard to find. After striking Queensland a few days ago, Monica has crossed Gulf of Carpentaria and is strafing the coast of the Northern Territory. All of this comes as part of a recent string of cyclone strikes across the country. The latest advisory from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center lists Monica as a category 5 cyclone with sustained wind of 145 knots (167 mph) and a central pressure of 892 mb.
Monica is now over Australia’s Wessel Islands, making Monica a far worse hurricane than anything seen in the Atlantic last summer. At 892 mb, Monica is stronger than the dreaded hurricanes Katrina and Rita ever were, never mind at landfall. The symmetry seen is Monica is flawless and it is rare to ever see a tropical system look so well-defined. …
The models are very consistent with a track just along the northern coast turning inland near Darwin. Such a pass by a category 5 cyclone along the coast would be very devastating to the whole region. Darwin residents should be prepared for a strike on Tuesday.
The American model ensemble forecasts are very consistent with the other models. This leaves little doubt to the destructive path that Monica is likely to take right over Darwin, the region’s largest city.
The models also indicate likely future intensification. With Monica already being an incredible category 5 cyclone, a bad situation is likely to get worse if that is possible.
Holy crap.
UPDATE, 4:00 PM: Welcome, InstaPundit readers!
Jeff Masters has an excellent update, as usual:
Australia’s hurricane season continues its parade of unusually intense storms this year with the intensification of Cyclone Monica today into a huge Category 5 storm. The 12 GMT advisory this morning from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center put Monica at 165 mph sustained winds and a 892 mb pressure, making it the second most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. The most intense Southern Hemisphere cyclone on record was Cyclone Zoe of 2003, which had a 879 mb pressure. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology puts Monica’s pressure at 905 mb, which would make it the fifth strongest cyclone on record. Reliable records of cyclone intensity only go back to the mid-1980s in the Southern Hemisphere, but two of top five strongest hurricanes ever recorded there have occurred this year–Tropical Cyclone Glenda (898 mb) from March, and now Monica. What’s really extraordinary about Monica is that she came so late in the season–tropical cyclone season is usually over by late April in the Southern Hemisphere. Monica’s formation echoes what happened in the Atlantic last year, with the intensification of Hurricane Wilma to a record 882 mb pressure very late in the hurricane season–October 19. When one adds in the $1 billion in devastation wrought in Queensland by Category 4 Cyclone Larry (915 mb) in March, Australians must feel like residents of hurricane alley in the Atlantic did last year, when three of the six strongest hurricanes on record occurred, causing the most damage ever–what’s going on with the weather? However, be reminded that the Northern Hemisphere Pacific Ocean had a very below-normal tropical cyclone season last year, and the Indian Ocean also had below normal activity.
Monica is expected to track just offshore the sparsely populated north coast of Australia today as it moves slowly westward. Darwin, the most heavily populated city in the region, will begin to feel Monica’s wind later today, and a direct hit is possible on Tuesday. Monica should slowly weaken before she gets to Darwin, since much of the circulation will be over land, and the eye will have to cross land as well. Still, Monica could still be a formidable Category 3 or 4 hurricane by then, and a direct hit on Darwin would likely cause severe damage.
