TheBanyanTree: Weather forecasts

[PJMoney]

When Monica was in the gulf the forecast track map always showed the monster
heading straight towards Nhulunbuy.  The estimated future position of the
storm was pictured as a circle with its centre dead on Nhulunbuy.  I
thought, "Poor people".

But in the end Monica went a bit more north than west and Nhulunbuy only got
the edges.  The winds were still nasty but nothing like the ones in the
"very destructive core".

I've been watching the maps carefully since Nhulunbuy got more or less
bypassed.  The forecast tracks have been updated every three hours or so.
And every one of them has had the track pointed straight at Darwin.  We are
the bullseye now.  But will that be the way it turns out?  Do they make us
the bullseye because we're where the people are and media folk can get all
excited about disasters and so on or do they do it because they really
believe that's the direction the cyclone will go?

Before the 5pm map update I was thinking it might not head south west.  It
might travel in an up and down sort of fashion, following the coast, as
these things have tended to do as long as we've been living here.  Then it
would slam into Bathurst and Melville Islands and we'd be like Nhulunbuy;
we'd catch the edges and that would be about all.

But no.  It's taken a decidedly WSW course and will be coming ashore at
Maningrida as a 5.  (Poor people.)  Then it's forecast to travel along the
coast, but on the landward side.  That's how we keep the bullseye focused on
us.

If it does do that at least it will only be a 3 by the time its edges get
here, sometime about 7am tomorrow, to be followed, inexorably, by its core.
We could be spending most of tomorrow huddled together in the bathroom.  I
have reading material ready.

But what if it goes straight ahead?  Then it might miss us.  Poor Jabiru
people and/or Pine Creek people.  Definitely poor Katherine people.  They
would get flooded again for sure.

Anyway, I've tied stuff up and cleared stuff out and cleaned stuff up.  The
cyclone kit is ready.  Tomorrow, early, I'll see how things are going and
then will either tape up the windows and wrap up the computer or I won't.

It's a weird thing to be hoping for safety for us when, if we get it, that
must mean danger for others.    

Janice