The edge of Cyclone Yasi, 500-kilometres across and rated category-five, is beginning to lash Australia's far north Queensland coast, with thousands of residents now in evacuation centres and others fleeing to higher ground on warnings it will be catastrophic and frightening.
Winds are expected up to 300-kilometres an hour; a leading storm surge of up to six-metres is predicted in places; and satellite imagery shows a monster weather system to rival Hurricane Katrina that destroyed the US city of New Orleans in 2005.
As it tracks across the Coral Sea, Yasi has wiped out an Australian weather station on tiny Willis Island, east of Cairns, where winds were last recorded at 185 kilometres an hour.
The full force of the will be felt when Yasi crosses the coast late tonight, bringing yet more massive rains far into the country.
Presenter: Canberra Correspondent, Linda Mottram
Speakers: Anna Bligh, Queensland premier; Kevin Walsh, Meteorologists from the University of Melbourne; Australia's Defence minister is Stephen Smith; Tyson Doherty, Cairns resident
MOTTRAM: As severe tropical cyclone Yasi steamed across the Coral Sea gathering strength and threatening a new weather record for Australia, Queensland authorities pleaded with around 30-thousand people in coastal areas of the state's far north to leave their homes. Thousands are housed in over twenty evacuation centres in the danger zone. And just hours before this savage storm hits, people are being urged not try to last minute evacuations but to batten down at home. Only weeks ago, the state premier, Anna Bligh, was daily steering Queensland through a flood crisis. Again she's having to do the same, reading from a weather bureau assessment to underline just how extreme conditions will be.
BLIGH: Severe tropical ... extremely serious threat life and property ... Cairns and Townsville. more than any in recent generations. last cat 5 in 1918.
MOTTRAM: And its not just the coastal area between Cairns and Townsville that's under threat.
BLIGH: swells .. sunshine coast.
MOTTRAM: That means almost the entire length of Queensland's coast facing effects. Meteorologists, like Kevin Walsh from the University of Melbourne confirmed the worst predictions, including that this cyclone would rival the damage caused by one of Australia's most iconic cyclone events, the destruction of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy in 1974.
WALSH: Certainly this storm .. very long time.
MOTTRAM: As the early winds began hitting, large trees in some areas were already falling and power cuts were being experienced. The Willis Island Bureau of Meteorology station was knocked out by Yasi .. a day earlier the four weather bureau staff had been evacuated.
Emergency broadcasts by the national broadcaster the ABC have begun, using short wave radio frequencies in particular, amid expectations that communications will be blacked out.
Earlier, the Australian Defence Force again swung into action at the request of civilian authorities, helping to evacuate hundreds of patients, among them fully ventilated patients and special care babies, from hospitals and aged care facilities in the danger areas to safety in Brisbane. Australia's Defence minister is Stephen Smith.
SMITH: It's a difficult logistical exercise but we managed it, and we were pleased to have been able to help, we're also on standby to respond to any request for emergency assistance we get in the aftermath of the cyclone.
MOTTRAM: Indeed some key Australian defence facilities are also in the firing line, as are hinterland areas of Queensland that would never normally expect to experience cyclonic conditions, so savage is Yasi.
If any doubts remained about the seriousness of the storm, authorities have warned that the eye, the calm centre of the storm, could take an hour to pass .. with officials repeatedly urging people not to be fooled that that calm might mean the end of cyclone danger. Residents are being warned they could be on their own through a terrifying ordeal for 24 hours.
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