Severe cyclone batters Australia oil and mining region
From Forbes: Severe cyclone batters Australia oil and mining region
A severe tropical cyclone packing winds of up to 235 kilometers an hour has battered a major oil and mining region of western Australia, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents and the lock-down of key industries, officials said.
Emergency officials said torrential rains and a storm sea surge of up to 10 meters driven by Cyclone Glenda would bring widespread flooding to a region already soaked by weeks of storms.
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While Glenda had weakened slightly as it approached the coast, officials warned it remained a very dangerous storm, nearly as powerful as Cyclone Larry, which devastated towns on Australia’s far northeastern coast 10 days ago.
Neil Bennett of the Western Australia Tropical Cyclone Center said Glenda was comparable in destructive power to Cyclone Bobby, which killed seven people in the Pilbara region in 1995.
‘This is one of the biggest ones we’ve seen,’ Bennett said, ‘it’s a very dangerous cyclone’.
Sure, we can’t say that global warming caused this cyclone, but we can say that global warming causes more incidents of more intense cyclones and hurricanes. — DS
