Hey there folks, here is an example of more extreme weather...I have checked the Bureau of Meteorology records and this seems to be becoming a more regular event:

Local newspaper

The Australian Newspaper

more information about Australian Tornadoes

it probably was a tornado, who knows, but these sudden and devastating sqawls are becoming more common.

It appears, that this was not the only 'tornado'

Hobart, Tasmania, mini tornado

and in Darwin (1500km away from the first tornado mentioned):

Pictures of the waterspout

Official Government report

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Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

I grew up the the region known as Tornado Alley here in the States. We regularly made trips to the cellar during the spring and summer. I remember coming home from Vacation Bible School when I was a kid and looking out the back window of the station wagon. I saw four tornados touch down in a wheat field. I'll never forget it. I never again complained when mom made us head to the cellar.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Hey Tinaa! Re-I also grew up in the I grew up in Tornado Alley at the Texas-Oklahoma border. You had a storm cellar? WOW, lucky you. I used to get stuffed under a matress in the bathtub. One tornado I remember was in the afternoon, and you could watch it drift across town and see the debris falling out the top, bits of houses, trains, cars. It even hit a stream and turned white for a couple of minutes, very pretty. Flattened thousands of homes.

But, the recent increase in Australia must be further proof of the "Completely Random, Globally Occurring, Freak Anomalies". I'm glad to see that there hasn't been massive loss of life.

'Cause ya know, when these "Odd" and "totally random events that occur during the geologic timeline" start killing people, the defenders of the "Freak Anomalies Theory" get Soooo defensive. It must ruin their whole day having to remind us over and over again that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

Oh Darn, I'm getting worked up again, I'm feeling a senseless urge to go waste my time conserving and increasing efficiency and reducing my contribution to the net CO2 volume. I am so compulsive!

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

Allow me to push the envelope here a bit by moving from tornadoes to whatever the equivalent of a hurricane is in the southern hemisphere. Here in the northern hemisphere the news networks hardly mention such storms occurring in the southern hemisphere nor any mention of such destruction as occurs in the north. Do you have them? How frequently? I understand they would be anti-cyclonic but haven't guessed at what their prevailing paths would be nor how often they would intersect surface land boundaries. Damienpaul, please give us a quick update and short history or tell us how to get one.

Those who monitor Jupiter and Saturn must see similar activity in the northern and southern hemispheres of these giants and must have some conclusions about comparitive severity across hemispheres. Anyone know what they have concluded?

Do tornadoes in each hemisphere mimic the cyclonicity of hurricanes? In the northern pacific what criteria are used to call a storm a typhoon versus a hurricane?

If we built huge water catching tankers that could withstand the ravages of these huge storms would we have a viable and economic fresh water source supplement? How much water could we withdraw from these super evaporators without causing detrimental consequences?

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

Gourdhead, you are on the right note, the folks at NOAA have an incredible resource related to the dynamics of hurricanes, cyclones (southern hemisphere) and typhoons here

I often use that site for teaching and for research.

also the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has information of many southern hemisphere severe weather events such as cyclones.

Feel free to ask anything further.

btw, Tom feel free to get worked up, i think its something we all have to do!

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Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

GOURDHEAD, re-You are right to think of ways to take advantage of the water.

In the homes I am building, I am including cisterns. With some good water system design that reduces consumption, an 8,000 to 12,000 gallon cistern (36,000 to 55,000 liters) can see the house through a 6 month dryspell. Right after the hurricane season there is typically less rain here, so the cisterns would be topped off for the dry spell. And, when rainfall is collected, and less runs off of the roofs into the streets, there may be less flooding.

Also, my systems process waste on site, so there would be less raw sewage in the storm drains. In the current city "system", when the streets and storm drains flood, the raw sewage ends up out in the streets and yards. Yuck. So, better management of the water "resource" and the waste products on the house site can solve many problems at once.

With the experience gained from the practice and application of these techniques, improved systems will be available for use in human colonization efforts out there in space. Instead of waiting for space designs to produce "spin-offs" for our society some decades in the future, we can improve things here-and-now, and "spin-up" technology for use in space.

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

Weird stuff is hitting all over the place, In July [if I recall correctly] my son was at a Honda meet in North GERMANY and and left as the weather turned really nasty, a Tornado appeared 15 minutes after he left. The last German Tornado was in 95 or 97 and did considerable damage to the town of Pforzhiem. If I recall [again up for discussion] England is currently #2 for various "spouts", but top honors MAY belong to Bangladesh and the Eastern regions of India but reporting suffers greatly in that area, and no common term is used [tornados, cyclonic storms] and that cumstruction and population density in that area means the number of fiolks made homeless is much higher than in the US midwest.

http://www.bangladeshtornadoes.org/

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Chuck B
49:32-N, 8:55-E

I still reside in Tornado Alley. And while our normal tornado season is over, we are getting freaky weather too.
Up until yesterday it had been getting steadily colder as is normal in October.
Perhaps even a little colder then normal.
But yesterday and today have seen the 70s, which had been gone for over three and a half weeks.
We had a few rounds of severe thunderstorms go through, with even a couple isolated weak tornadoes, which is very unusual.