Australia Cyclone

Australia cyclone shuts copper refinery, coal mines

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia's huge Cyclone Yasi forced a copper refinery and coal mines to shut and paralyzed sugar and coal exports as it began pounding the northeast coast on Wednesday, threatening to further inflate world sugar, copper and coal prices.

The edge of the cyclone, one of the most powerful recorded, came ashore in north Queensland state, heading directly for sugarcane fields and threatening a 300,000-tonnes-a-year copper refinery in the coastal city of Townsville. ( Read Australia Cyclone more... )

Australia’s Cyclone Yasi May Destroy Even ‘Cyclone Proof’ Homes

Australia’s Cyclone Yasi, with winds of up to 300 km (186 miles) per hour, is so powerful it could blow apart even “cyclone proof” houses, engineers said on Wednesday.

Yasi is headed for major towns and cities along the northeast coast. It is believed to be the strongest ever to hit Australia, surpassing Cyclone Tracy which largely destroyed the northern city of Darwin in 1974.

“Once you get to extreme cases, you are in uncharted ground and the test data I have got I would not trust it if I had to live there myself,” said Dr Robert Leicester, a researcher with the government’s national scientific research body. ( Read Australia Cyclone more... )

Australia Cyclone Warning Grips Flood-Ravaged North

SYDNEY — Authorities scrambled to airlift hospital patients from the path of a cyclone roaring toward waterlogged northeastern Australia and urged low-lying communities to evacuate because of potentially deadly flash floods.

Cyclone Yasi was expected to slam into the coast of Queensland state Wednesday as a Category 4 storm and dump up to three feet (one meter) of rain on communities already saturated from months of flooding. ( Read Australia Cyclone more... )

Powerful cyclone slams into flood-hit Queensland

(CNN) -- A massive, powerful cyclone has begun to slam into the flood-ravaged northern state of Queensland, as people take shelter from the devastating weather.

Tropical Cyclone Yasi, a Category 5 storm, the highest designation on Australia's classification system, made landfall late on Wednesday night, local time.

"The large, destructive core of Cyclone Yasi is starting to cross the coast between Innisfail and Cardwell with a dangerous storm tide and battering waves to the south of the cyclone centre," Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement. ( Read Australia Cyclone more... )

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