The second category five plus hurricane equivalent in a month is about to strike our friends down under.
[Link] Cyclone Monica, a slow-moving maximum category-five tropical storm, buffeted Aboriginal communities on the western shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria on Sunday night and halted production at an alumina refinery. Monica, with winds gusting at 350 kph (220 mph), was about 520 km (320 miles) northeast of the tropical city of Darwin on Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology said. It said the storm was expected to cross the coast later on Monday and reach the Darwin area by Tuesday afternoon. Cyclone Monica is of similar intensity to Cyclone Larry, which caused at least A$250 million ($185 million) in damage when it hit the Queensland coast around Innisfail last month, smashing houses and destroying banana crops.
Australia's coastal areas are not as densely populated as their US counterparts. And many communities, such as the town of Darwin, have been built using strict building codes designed to weather the worst storms. But if something like this happened in the US it might mean two Hurricane Andrews, one passing over Florida and another raking the Texas-Louisiana border, within a few weeks of each other. And both those regions are at or near sea level (Or in some cases below sea level). The damage to the US would probably be in the
hundreds of billions of dollars, energy infrastructure and shipping would be devastated, and the loss of life could easily be in the thousands--or worse.
[Update 6:56 AM EDT]: More on Cyclone Monica at the WeatherUnderground including a Sat photo showing the stadium effect. HT: Hoya90.