Peter Copland on Cyclone Tracy (continued)

Spent several hours playing with the radar during the afternoon, trying to follow the movement of any identifiable cells in the circulating rain bands in the system. This endeavour proved to be quite impossible. I was hoping to be able to find a cell in the wall and measure its speed as it travelled within the wall; one could not even see any real movement in the leading edges of the rain bands. With the 185 km/hr winds reported from Bathurst Island AWS, some high speed movement of something should have been observable.

On the PPI display, Tracy seemed like a Star Trek monster, slowly approaching, swallowing up everything in its path. My only real achievement was a series of 35 mm photographs taken in the afternoon and early in the night; most of these ended up in the official report.

I don't think it even started to rain much 'til after 8 pm, and then not too much wind. This changed, soon, and it was becoming wet and windy by 9 pm. Around 11 pm a phone call from the Observer, isolated at the airport, reported that the PPI had failed. Question; to go or not to go? Stupidity won, and I drove to the airport. Fortunately I used our new Suzuki (the original mini 4x4) as, in several places, I had to climb over the footpath and road divider strips. The radar came good with resetting of the PPI overload. The Observer at the radar, Vince Shuey, seemed to have been left on his own by the organisation, but then it was probably a fairly safe place. Would have been rather hairy by oneself though.

Not too much trouble getting home in the Suzuki with a 90 plus km/hr tailwind. Later, maybe 12.30 am, Vince rang again with a different problem which we managed to fix over the phone. Shortly after we were peering out with a spotlight and saw the overhead phone cable from the street cut by a sheet of flying roofing iron. No more radar to worry about. The power had been off for several hours by now. Things were getting a bit serious. About 3 am all became quiet; the eye. Calculating 30 minutes in the clear, we moved, post-haste, with our school-teacher neighbours to the high school. What was a normal five minute trip took 20 minutes and nearly exhausted our window of opportunity. Ian completed the last 500 metres with a flat tyre in true movie fashion.

Bureau of Meteorology