TheBanyanTree: Weather actuality

[PJMoney]

Yesterday at 5pm Monica was causing havoc at Maningrida.  By 8pm she had
moved a few tens of kilometres inland, had weakened to a 4 and was heading
for Jabiru.  If she went straight ahead she'd miss us by a very wide margin.
If she turned west towards us she'd only be a 2 by the time (7am) she was
expected here so, thinking she wouldn't turn, I went to bed in a more or
less easy frame of mind and slept the sleep of the more or less unconcerned.

The first thing I did when I woke at 6.30 was look out the window.  This
time of year at that time of morning the sky is just light enough so that,
even without glasses on, I can distinguish the shapes of the trees outside.
I was expecting to see palm fronds tossing and waving about and there was
some of that but it was intermittent.  There would be a gust and some
swaying and then everything settled back into complete stillness.  Obviously
the forecast hadn't been completely accurate.

So I got out of bed and came in here to switch on the computer and find out
where she was.  Uh, oh.  She really had turned west.  If she kept on that
course she was bound to hit us.  She'd be a 2 (which would be much better
than a 4) but she was obviously taking longer than expected on her travels -
which probably had at least something to do with her loss of force.  

When the 11am update was posted (at 11.30) she was only a 1 but still headed
straight for us.  In fact, the map showed her outer margins as right at the
edge of town.  So I kept looking at the trees in our backyard, waiting for
them to start whipping about.  The rain had started but it was nothing much.
We get heavier in a standard Wet season storm.

Looking elsewhere for the wind I went out into the front yard and noticed
again the palms that grow under our power and phone lines.  They're a very
slow growing variety but after the ten years we've been here the fronds had
finally grown higher than the lines.  If they caught too much wind they
could easily drag the lines down.  We stood out in the rain and cut the
palms down.  

The 100k gusts never arrived.  The highest speed recorded here was 60k but
we saw nothing like that at our place.  Monica had turned into an ex-cyclone
- a tropical low.  There hasn't even been enough rain to make us think about
emptying the pool.

I'm very, very glad that we didn't have to live through even a category 1.
The relief is enormous.  I don't care about having chopped down those palms
unnecessarily.  They were going to have to go sometime or other.  But at the
same time I have this odd feeling of having been cheated.  All that anxiety
for nothing.  I know how crazy it is to feel that way but there you are.  Or
rather, there I am.  Being a human being is to be such a mass of
contradictions.

Janice