Where's Willie??

[onetrack]

It's been a fair while since Williedoo posted. I trust he's O.K.? Maybe he's got caught up with rebuilding his convoluted driveway with all the free giveaways he's been acquiring?

[old man emu]

Doesn't he live in Southeast Queensland? If he does, he'd be too drenched to do anything.

[facthunter]

Beautiful one day, Perfect the Next?  THAT Damn DAM is full again.  Nev

[old man emu]

30 minutes ago, facthunter said:

THAT Damn DAM is full again.

And more water queueing up in the creeks waiting for a chance to flow in.

[rgmwa]

He’s probably up the creek with a paddle.

[facthunter]

Do Jet ski's have THEM? Nev. 

[nomadpete]

Jet skis are a law unto themselves. All other small motor craft are required to carry 'an alternate means of propolsion'. (Paddles)

[onetrack]

Willie messaged me, he's just fine, he just cut back on computer time to concentrate on his driveway repairs and other jobs. Oh, course, he's also purchased a couple more trailers to cart stuff around with! 😄

[facthunter]

Yes a pretty anti-social sort of machine. Id ban them in a lot of places on safety grounds..  Nev

[spacesailor]

But I find I'm more in communication! .

By the internet,  just like chatting with friends. 

Hi friends. 

spacesailor

[old man emu]

5 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

Hi friends.

G'day, mate!

[nomadpete]

Hello everybody.

 

All the best for the festive season!

[nomadpete]

That goes for you too, Wille!

 

[red750]

Willie has now been missing for more  than a month now. I hope he hasn't been blown away by Cyclone Alfred.

[spacesailor]

Probably rowing around his land . LoL

spacesailor

[onetrack]

I think his new hip must have galvanised him into a flurry of finishing a lot of unfinished jobs - that were probably unfinished, because he spent too much time on the Social Australia forum!

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

 a lot of unfinished jobs - that were probably unfinished, because he spent too much time on the Social Australia forum!

Know the situation very well.

[facthunter]

There are always MORE jobs to do.  Nev

[spacesailor]

But after that superdupper hip replacement . Your muscles have withered away , so what was , a days work , now takes a week .

Gransoms are all at work so  no help there , & I refuse to take their weekend away  .

spacesailor

 

[willedoo]

Maybe building a storm bunker will have to be added to the jobs list. First cyclone down this way in 50 years but dodged a bullet where I am; not enough rain to wet the rain gauge and very little wind. The attached radar map was 1 to 2am this morning. Moreton and Stradbroke Islands acted as a buffer and knocked the pace off it. It's now a low off Bribie Island slowly headed this way. There's still up to 500mm of rain predicted but that will mostly be on the the more southern side of the low.

 

Even though we didn't cop the wind here, it's still good to have made the preps. Everything is charged, water containers filled, food stocked, concrete block baffle barriers across the driveway and I bought a generator and a phone charger that plugs into the car. Gravity fed water and a gas stove helps. It started as a Cat 2 cyclone and one of the lady presenters on ABC radio made the joke that in NQ they don't even bother to take the washing off the clothesline for a Cat 2. 150kph gusts can still do some damage though. My little old shack is built to 43 metres/sec. wind rating, about 155kph, but I've built in extra bracing and tie down on top of that.

 

One advantage I have is a 38 degree cathedral exposed beam ceiling with a plywood ceiling. The ply sheets are 3 metres long so completely cover the  internal area without joins. To cut a long story short, I could lose the tin roof but the ply screwed to the rafters with battens over that would hold and would still repel water for a sustained period. My brother has a tile roof so if they blow off and the blue paper rips, the gyprock ceiling turns to porridge. The 38 degree roof pitch requires more wall bracing and less tie down than a lower pitch roof, but I doubled most of the triple-grip tie down anyway. Stump to bearer tie down is double requirements and there's a ton of cyclone rods and bracing ply panels. The biggest blow I've had here was probably about 60 knots and the shack didn't budge, so hopefully it would stand a cat 2 cyclone it's rated for.

 

The last cyclone I experienced here was 1974 where it crossed just north of us. I was renting an old cane cutter's barracks right on the riverbank and it was shaking and rattling so much that I slept with the full face motorbike helmet on. It goes without saying I had that same helmet parked beside the bed last night just in case, or maybe just for good luck. In the '74 cyclone I woke up to knee deep water in the kitchen, waist deep at it's peak. Having breakfast, the water was just lapping the bottom of the table but didn't go too much higher. In a previous cyclone, that place had only six inches of the roof peak sticking out of the water.

 

 

[facthunter]

Unless the unexpected happens this thing won't have any more damaging winds, but the sea swells and the rain south of it may persist a while.   Nev

[Marty_d]

Sounds like you're well prepared.

The ply ceiling is extra bracing as well.

[willedoo]

Latest BoM update only mentions marine wind warning, no land warnings apart from the flood warnings. Most of the future rain is expected later today and through tomorrow with some going through to mid week. Latest prediction for my area is possibly 200mm so a lot better than the 500mm possible forecast for some areas. This morning when they downgraded it to a low, the wind warning was down to 55kph steady and about 80kph gusts, but that's gone now.

 

There was a lot of cyclones down here in the 1880's/1890's. My local town recorded 90" for the month of January in one of those years and ongoing rain cut the road to the coast for five months. Bearing in mind the old road would have been lower than the present one, just corderoy paper bark trees on the swamp with a gravel topcoat. The most rain I've had here was 33" in 24 hours in the 1992 flood.

[facthunter]

I've flown into Cairns a few times, in rain so heavy you'd wonder how any Plane could cope with it.   Nev