Surviving the storm

Everyone is probably fed up to their eye teeth with cyclone talk after Ex Tropical Cyclone Alfred has stopped pirouetting and taken his final bows before exiting stage left and leaving a trail of damage in his wake, but there are some lessons to be learnt.

It was good to be forewarned about a week in advance while he was still hundreds of kilometres offshore, but some would say the coverage was over-hyped, over-politicised and over-televised.

For several days before Alfie finally crossed the coast, we had reporters stationed everywhere from northern New South Wales, the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Moreton Bay, Caloundra, Maroochydore, all standing outdoors and telling us not to be complacent, the cyclone really was coming.

Many looked drenched even when it wasn't raining, and some wags have suggested their camera crews might have kept a hose handy to give them that dramatic wet-haired look.

Then we had politicians such as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen, various Greens and Teals such as Zali Steggall blaming "climate change" for making cyclones more frequent and severe.

The Climate Council also weighed in with the same predictable theme, but nothing could be further from the truth. Cyclones this far south might be relatively rare but Alfred was just one of a long conga line, and cyclones have actually decreased in frequency and intensity.

Queensland scientist and climate guru Dr Jennifer Marohasy posted a report while Alfie was still making very slow progress towards the coast which included the following:

Contrary to popular narratives cyclones are not becoming more intense, and their frequency is waning. CSIRO research has confirmed a statistically significant downward trend in the annual number of tropical cyclones in the Australian region over the period extending from 1981/82 to 2017/18 that is during the satellite period. The intensity of these cyclones is also in decline…

During the period 1935 to 1974 every other year there was a cyclone making landfall as far south as Brisbane and into New South Wales. This was a period of much more cyclone activity. There were two cyclones that made landfall as far south as New South Wales in 1934: on January 30th and then again on February 19th. Two cyclones also made landfall in New South Wales in 1959: TC Beatrice and TC Connie. These four cyclones are listed in a journal article by J.L. Gray et al. entitled 'On the Recent Hiatus of Tropical Cyclones Landfalling in NSW, Australia' published in the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science in 2020.

The most extreme cyclone to hit Queensland, Tropical Cyclone Mahina, was arguably the world's most intense with a central pressure recorded at 880 hectopascals, a 12-metre storm surge, and 300 kilometre per hour winds. That was in 1899 – 126 years ago.

A Wikipedia search shows that Mahina struck Bathurst Bay, Cape York Peninsula, on March 4 1899, and its winds and enormous storm surge combined to cause the deaths of more than 300 people.

"The Great Gold Coast Cyclone" which struck on February 20, 1954, also caused widespread damage and about 30 fatalities.

So, while Alfred caused some serious flooding, building damage and reportedly the biggest power blackouts in history, on the scale of things we probably got off fairly lightly. My sympathies are with all those who did suffer, but newsflash for Albo, Zali and co … there weren't any coal fired power stations in 1899 and no one had heard of anthropogenic climate change back in 1954.

Here in our northern Sunshine Coast enclave just behind the beach, we were very lucky - despite daily warnings of potential strong winds and rainfall of up to 800 mm, we remained practically becalmed until after Alfie crossed the coast, then some moderate winds and just enough rain to top up the pool and big rainwater tank after several days with no rain at all.