Cyclone Yasi

[Gben 20]

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/flood...e-1225998762870

 

IF you're struggling to grasp the magnitude of Tropical Cyclone Yasi, consider this: it is so large it would almost cover the United States, most of Asia and large parts of Europe.

 

Most of the coverage about the scale of Yasi has tried to compare it with storms of the past - it's bigger than Larry, more powerful than Tracy.

 

But just as powerful is this comparison, showing this storm is continental in size. The main bloc of the cyclone is 500km wide, while its associated activity, shown above in a colour-coding to match intensity, stretches over 2000km.

 

The storm's scale of destruction is as shocking as it is inevitable. In the map above, the United States from Pennsylvania in the east to Nevada in the west, from Georgia in the south to Canada in the north and well into Mexico would be battered with 300km/h winds and up to one metre of rain.

 

The economic impact would be felt around the world.

 

This map shows the impact if the storm was attacking Asia:

Again, the scale is unthinkable - taking in an area from Japan, the Koreas and China all the way through southeast Asia, around through India and the Himalayas and threatening large parts of central Asia.

 

This would have billions of people directly in the path of the category 5 storm, creating a human tide of displaced cyclone "refugees".

 

This map shows the storm over western and central Europe:

Just as we saw in our visualisation of the Queensland floods, the whole of Britain would be overwhelmed.

 

But this time, France and Germany would also be catastrophically affected, delivering another body blow to the European economy at the least and also disrupting the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

 

Even the eye of Yasi is as big as a city. This next map shows the heart of the storm over New Orleans, covering Louisiana and neighbouring states.

 

The eye itself, at 35km across, would stretch over all of the Katrina-ravaged city's centre. In the maps below, you can see Shanghai and New Zealand's north island bearing the brunt of category five.

 

Yasi's eye over New Orleans

 

Yasi's eye over Shanghai

 

Yasi's eye over New Zealand

These maps are merely visualisations of relative scales and are not meant to suggest storms of this level would form anywhere in the world.

 

Instead, they illustrate an annual threat that is, if not uniquely Australian, at least so much a part of our summer that we speak of "cyclone season" as though it is on a par with "cricket season".

 

But every so often, we are forced to confront the raw power of our country and its dangers.

 

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/flood...0#ixzz1ClrRMZxr

[Doctor Destiny 41]

I thought for a second that was the storm butt****ing my neck of the woods.

[Luk3us 63]

As if that region wasn't already battered and bruised now this? Someone doesn't like you.

[Nmenth 291]

At first I read Cyclone Yuri. That sounded like an interesting mod...

[Sonic 296]

Cyclone Yasi - Townsville

 

Webcam of the approaching Cyclone Yasi due to strike north of Townsville in North Queensland, Australia. Webcam is situated in central T1 Apartments in the CBD of Townsville.

 

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/caillins13

[Luk3us 63]

Seems that webcam people lost their power.

[Gben 20]

Scientists estimate that a tropical cyclone releases heat energy at the rate of 50 to 200 exajoules (1018 J) per day, equivalent to about 1 PW (1015 watt). This rate of energy release is equivalent to 70 times the world energy consumption of humans and 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity, or to exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes

 

This info is at Wikipedia - the citations for the info come from:

NOAA and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

 

I heard this stat, quoted on the news this morning.

[Nmenth 291]

You missed the superscripts, that should be

Scientists estimate that a tropical cyclone releases heat energy at the rate of 50 to 200 exajoules (10¹⁸ J) per day, equivalent to about 1 PW (10¹⁵ watt).

Makes a bit of difference...

 

And since a Mt of TNT is an exact definition, and thus can be calculated by other exact definitions, a 10 Mt bomb detonated every 20 minutes would produce exactly 3,012,480,000,000,000,000 joules of energy per day, which is only 3 exajoules.

 

Also, a joule can't be converted to a watt, it has to be a watt hour. 50 exajoules = 13.89 petawatt hours.

[PurpleGaga27 40]

So maybe under this scale, Cyclone Yasi would be about a few times bigger and stronger than Hurricane Katrina.