Seeing as I live in Australia and there's been a few little geographical details happening lately, I thought I might enlighten you. You really should already have heard, but in case you haven't:
--there were lots of floods in Queensland and northern New South Wales. For instance, Brisbane, the third biggest city in the country, was more or less wiped out. Impact this has on me: I got a white cake instead of a mango cheesecake for my birthday because the price of mangoes has skyrocketed. It's okay, though, the white cake was awesome.
--there was a pretty big typhoon (aka a Southern hemisphere hurricane, don't quote me on the specifics) called Yasi that struck the northern coast of Queensland in the vicinity of Cairns. (Cairns is where the Great Barrier Reef is, except Cairns is a bit inland and the reef is a bit ... outland.) It ended up not damaging Cairns as much as it could have, so everyone is much relieved. Impact this has on me: none that I've noticed.
--the temperature in Sydney has been nigh on ridiculous. For several days last week it was, to be official about it, ridiculously hot. I've vaguely heard rumors that the city set some sort of record for the largest number of consecutive days of Grossly Too Hot Temperatures, or for the Hottest Night (over 30 degrees Celcius, which is over 86 degrees Fahrenheit). It definitely jumped north of 40 (roughly 104 Fahrenheit) on multiple occasions and Saturday was especially unbearable. Sunday started out precisely the same, but then had a bizarre sudden drop to the low 20s (low 70s, though I felt like I'd have said 60s if I were thinking Fahrenheit) that afternoon. Whew! Impact this has on me: huge. Vast. Exceptionally noticeable. Other natural disasters? What other natural disasters?
Monday, February 7, 2011
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2 comments:
Snow, ice, blizzard conditions across the USA. Does not affect you, as you don't live here anymore. Various family members, however, have been enjoying snow days from school, iced in at home days, and ski days, and lots of beautiful scenery as the bare trees are snow and ice covered. Having fun watching a variety of birds at the feeders. Wish you were here.
Brisbane was rather less than more wiped out. The population of greater Brisbane is over 2 million people and in the Brisbane local government area (so excluding other nearby council areas such as Logan and Redlands) the population is still over 1 million.
Less than 19,000 properties had full or partial flooding. Assuming 2 people per property, that's around 38,000 people directly affected (although some would be indirectly affected if their employers were flooded). So we're talking probably 5% or less of the population.
You don't like bananas so Cyclone Yasi probably won't have had a great effect on you - yet. The double whammy of floods and cyclones will push up general food prices during the next year though.
Meanwhile, quite large numbers of people are affected; some due to overseas people not looking at where the events happened and cancelling holidays booked for places that weren't touched. At least you're trying to let people know that there are more places in Australia than those that were. :-)
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