If you find Vickie and I a little hard to get out of the house at the moment, it's probably because we're working to make sure we're ready should a cyclone come our way. For those of you not in the region, we've already had one, Neville, form briefly North of us; as I type another, Tropical Cyclone Olga, is intensifying in the Coral Sea east of us and slowly making its way toward the coast.
Olga has developed into a category two cyclone - not severe, but still with winds in the 100km/h+ range close to the eye - and strike somewhere 60km north of us. If so, the worst we should get is some heavy rain and a bit of a blow, but being forces of nature cyclones aren't quite predictable and we've already had one experienced forecaster state that Neville would be the last cyclone we'd see this season.
Weather permitting, I intend to be out in our yard tomorrow, cutting some trees back and hopefully taking some assorted garden refuse to the tip; when the wind picks up anything, especially large palm fronds, could become a house-damaging projectile.
Wish us luck...
UPDATE 24 Jan 10 9AM: TC Olga has taken a turn toward the North, so they're now saying she'll ground around Cooktown. The threat area has been shifted so that we're outside of it, but Olga has slowed and is still gathering intensity as it sits off the coast; who knows what it could do next?
While we're in the yard, cleaning and putting away, we're also running backups of our vital data.
