Pictures are starting to come through of homes torn apart, others with roofs off, stacks of power lines down. Several beachfront homes landed up in the sea when the foreshore beneath them was washed away ( had 10 feet of storm swell on top of the extra high tides). So the clean up begins. Rain has all gone from down here now and back out to sea. I think the cyclone and the other low pressure systems relationship caught the weather people unawares. On the satellite it just looked as though all the southern cloud mass was part of the cyclone when in fact it wasn't.
On the TV yesterday they had an image I hadn't seen being used before. It had a blue background with just an outline of the coast on it instead of the usual topographical one. On it, it showed the air current movement into the storm. Clearly there were 2 separate flows, 1 from the NE, the other from the SE. One commentator had remarked about the rapid increase from a Cat 2 up to Cat 5 that had occurred in such a short time and distance. It may be that that 2nd airflow had boosted the cyclone's power. Once it made landfall it seems to have diminished just as rapidly (just as well). On the Radar there was a distinct gap between the rain bands soon after, which puzzled me.
