Yasi, a category 5 cyclone, pummelled Queensland's coast yesterday morning, delivering 290 kilometre per hour winds - 10 km/h faster than Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Once it had hit the coast, Yasi continued moving inland but was severely weakened. By 10pm, Australia's Bureau of Meterology announced that Yasi had been downgraded to a tropical low, the lowest of the cyclone categories, with gusts of up to 90 km/h.The Bureau warned that the Queensland coast may be in for flash flooding as the cyclone dumped up to 150 millimetres of rain. However, images from the European Space Agency'sSoil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite showed that flooding is actually unlikely to occur on the coast.
SMOS measures the moisture content of the soil by recording variations in the microwave radiation emitted naturally from the earth. Soil moisture information allows researchers to predict rainfall and flooding - the wetter the soil is, the more water there is to be evaporated and turned into rain. What's more, once soil is saturated it no longer absorbs water which again increases the chance of flooding.
Posting on the SMOS blog on Tuesday, Yann Kerr, principal investigator on SMOS, wrote that Cyclone Yasi was expected to hit areas "almost where the soils are the driest," such as the coastal communities of Cardwell and Innisfall, south of Cairns. As predicted, those areas were hit and no flooding has been reported."
via Short Sharp Science /continue reading
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