The Midwest is experiencing what the Russians call a Buran [Буран], basically a hurricane of snow, because blizzard just isn’t bad enough.

Based on the amount of water that has been sucked out of the Gulf of Mexico today, It is going to involve major snow. To paraphrase Chief Brody “You’re gonna to need a bigger plow.”

It’s a good thing that there’s nothing to that “global climate change” thing, because this might be what is going to happen every year, the new “normal”. Wouldn’t that be lovely? [/sarcasm]

The Australians think that Yasi may have reached its maximum intensity before landfall, and the reporting from the Navy seems to bear it out. It is due to make landfall around midnight local time [8AM my time], which will just increase the terror level.

I still have some hope for an eyewall replacement cycle, which would drop the winds, but the storm surge is well established and will smash into the coast and back up the rivers.

The ABC has sent up a Yasi Live Blog to cover the event.

They reported that the Monster cyclone knocks out weather radar

Category five Cyclone Yasi has knocked out the weather bureau’s radar system on Willis Island, about 450 kilometres east of Cairns in far north Queensland.

The Navy said that Willis was reporting sustained winds of 80mph [130 kph] and gusts of 115mph [185 kph] before it went down.

The main story was Cyclone to bring ’24 hours of terror’

Queenslanders have been told to prepare themselves for a terrifying 24 hours as the “most catastrophic storm ever” takes aim at heavily populated areas of the state’s north.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi was upgraded to category five this morning as the weather bureau warned it was likely to be “more life-threatening” than any storm seen in Australia in living memory.

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing their homes ahead of the monster storm, which is expected to hit the coast between Cairns and Innisfail with winds of up to 295 kilometres per hour near the core.

Premier Anna Bligh says the storm’s expected landfall at about midnight AEST tonight is the worst possible news for a state which is already reeling from recent flooding.

She says Cyclone Yasi is the “most catastrophic storm to ever hit our coast”.

The officials have figured it out, let’s hope that the people take the information to heart and leave. The storm is moving quickly, which is good, but it is powerful enough that it will still be at hurricane strength well inland. This isn’t just a coastal event. Then we have to wait to see how much rain falls, and where.

February 1, 2003

Commander:
Rick Douglas Husband, Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
William C. McCool, Commander, USN

Payload Commander:
Michael P. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Mission Specialist:
Kalpana Chawla, PhD
David M. Brown, MD, Captain, USN
Laurel Blair Salton Clark, MD, Captain, USN

Payload Specialist:
Ilan Ramon, Colonel, Israel Air Force

Position: 16.4S 149.9E [ 6 PM CST 0000 UTC 10AM AEST].
Movement: West-Southwest [250°] near 22 mph [35 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 150 mph [240 kph].
Wind Gusts: 185 mph [295 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 300 miles [480 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 45 miles [ 74 km].
Minimum central pressure: 922 mb ↓.

Currently about 275 miles [ 440 km] East of Cairns, Australia in the Coral Sea.

A Cyclone Warning is in effect for coastal areas from Cape Melville to Sarina, extending inland to east of Croydon to Hughenden.

A Cyclone Watch is in effect for coastal and island communities North and South of the Warning area from Lockhart River to Winton and adjacent inland areas in Queensland.

Check the Australian BoM Cyclone page for the most current information.

The latest from the ABC: Tens of thousands flee ‘perfect storm’.

The Saffir-Simpson scale is at a maximum Category 4 and the Australian system classifies this as a Category 5 storm. Australians should be aware that I primarily rely on US Navy forecasts from the tropical warning center in Hawaii with the information derived from satellites. The sustained winds will generally be higher than under the Australian system because the US system uses a 1 minute average vice a 10 minute average.

The last satellite image showed an open eye about 10 miles across and good outflow, which indicates that this storm is still strengthening. There is always the hope of an eyewall replacement cycle before landfall which would reduce wind speed, but the storm has been tracking in a straight line towards Cairns for so long that it is building a significant storm surge ahead of it. The Navy is reporting “Maximum significant wave height at 011200z is 38 feet.” 11.6 meter waves is not something to look forward to.

I’ve been through several of these things, and I would not hang around for this one. If you are near the coast leave. This thing is Katrina-sized and the damage will be widespread and severe. Get out of its way. Any boats along the coast are going to end up well inland. Katrina carried 100-foot steel shrimp boats miles inland on the storm surge. Innisfail and Cardwell could well be scoured off the map. Unless you have been in a tornado, you have no concept of what is coming. LEAVE!

Only in Latin.

Every so often I post a variation of this:

Remember: whenever you hear “average” in a discussion of money in politics, the person using it is lying about something. Honest people use “median”, which is the point in the middle, with half the group above and half below.

In Lambert’s Live Cairo blogging, they had people talking about the economic situation in Egypt that included:

Howard Pack, Wharton professor of business and public policy, is co-author of a book entitled, The Arab Economies in a Changing World, written with Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at The Peterson Institute for International Economics

These two clowns used a variation on the “average” scam, they talked about per capita, and how great things have been in Tunisia and Egypt, so there can’t really be an economic issue… except for the fact that the people at the top got all the money and those at the bottom got increases in food prices. Median – it is the only measure that counts.

Lambert also caught Google doing a non-evil thing: a Twitter to Voice / Voice to Twitter system that uses regular telephones.

Egypt will probably cut off cell phone service tomorrow to mess up the big march that is planned. People already figured it out, and have made their plans. Mubarak and his crowd are way behind the curve on this.