Ingrid makes landfall by Elizabeth Saary
Tropical Cyclone Ingrid made landfall in Australia’s Cape York Peninsula early today. Luckily it did not pass through any densely populated areas so injury and damage were kept to a minimum.
When the storm struck land it was the strongest to hit Queensland in more than thirty years. After making landfall though it rapidly lost energy and was downgraded to a Category One storm. It had previously been a Category Four and even briefly a Five.
Even though the storm weakened there was still some concern for the towns on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula. These areas still lay in the path of the storm and were evacuated. As of this morning it was yet to be seen how much damage was sustained in these areas.
The storm is expected to reinvigorate once again as it moves into the waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria today. The top end of the Northern Territory will now be on alert as the storm is expected to strike land here late Friday or Saturday.
In other news, West Palm Beach in Florida, USA has hardly been holiday heaven. A slow moving weather front produced 80mm of rain in just 6 hours recently. This is quite exceptional given that the average rainfall for the whole of March is just 85mm.
On the other side of the USA, things have at last dried up and warmed up in California. They have had quite a cold, wet winter but in Redding on Wednesday a temperature of 25C was recorded which is over 8C higher than the March average.
Meanwhile, in Helsinki, Finland temperatures have been falling well below the average. Early this morning a minimum value of -17C was recorded. This compares to the average March night time temperature of -7C.
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