On Sunday 6. April we were happily boating on Annan
River
just south of
Cooktown, fishing and mud crabbing. That night we got home and when I did my cyclone check
online I was
blown away - there was a Cat 1, predicted to become a Cat 3, and head towards Cape York.
By 8. April
cyclone Ita sure was a Cat 3 and still heading too badly towards us. I was hoping at that stage
and kept
putting off the cyclone preparation - what if it didn't come here and
it was all wasted time? I had work to do so I just kept working.
On 10. April
it turned to Cat 4, and its predicted path moved
closer
and closer to Cooktown. That got me off my bum and
into cyclone
preparation!
And sure enough - within hours only after turning to a Cat 4, Cyclone
Ita was a Cat 5 - the most destructive kind on the scale.
Its forecast track map
now really
showed it was coming to Cooktown - and that was very
serious
stuff.
We got all kinds of warnings - over TV, radio, even emails
from the shire council - and a
cyclone
shelter was activated in town.
After doing all our cyclone
preparation, after lots of thinking we decided to go to the shelter
and be safe.
The shelter is only a
few years old
and what a great idea it was to build it. We could watch the news,
... we could see out through the windows
protected by
debris screens;
The video below is from early hours
still - before the
cyclone was here, but the winds were already
picking
up:
... the info
was constantly updated,
... and it
got very scary indeed:
In the afternoon on the 11. April it was said that cyclone Ita was stronger than Yasi
(2011; one of the worst two ever in Australia, along with Larry of 2006).
But then,
something saved us. Late at night when cyclone
Ita crossed
the coast at Cape Flattery, it had been downgraded to Cat
4. And because it had some land
to cross
from Cape Flattery to Cooktown, it was further downgraded to
Cat 3 by
the time it got here.
It was still noisy once it
arrived in
Cooktown after midnight (you have to turn your computer
volume
up as it was a huge room and it was not possible to record the full sound of the roaring wind from the floor):
I
also got to film a bit of the winds
through a screened window during
the night until the outside lights went
off:
In
the morning, it was all over,
... and we were checking the
damage outside
...
... while waiting to be allowed
out of the
shelter.
Here
are
some
trees you saw in the cyclone winds in the videos above:
And here is some more - all
broken and
bare:
When we finally got out, we
understood just HOW much the downgrade from Cat 5 to Cat 3 had meant to
us!!!
There were uprooted trees,
... there was quite a
bit of mess in
places.
There was the occasional roof,
... but nowhere
near as many as after Larry and Yasi - they were a heck of A LOT worse
than this.
The most unfortunate was
the West
Coast Hotel that lost its roof.
The weather was still
cyclonic
during my first look around in town:
... while the
following day was beautiful and sunny with a perfect
sunset as
cyclone Ita had well and truly left the area:
All
in all we were very,
very lucky
- Cooktown
would have been
flattened if cyclone Ita didn't downgrade
right in the end of its path!
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