All I'm going to say is, I was actually kind of excited to finally have the experience of a cyclone passing really close, infact I was somewhat hoping it'd swipe us.

But, I can say now that once it got to around midnight, the wind was flat out scary the way it was coming in huge gusts. The thought of the roof peeling off went through my head many times. I was relieved (For myself) when I looked a the track map closer to it's forecast crossing time, and seeing that it had taken a swerve to the South, and would now miss us.

That said, if we were to get another hit, I'd hope it wouldn't be such a strong system. Just something that brings a heap of rain. I do say that personally I get a bit of a kick out of cyclones, but I can see why others wouldn't if they were in the direct path of it.

Reality is, it's going to happen, best you can do is hope you get through without much damage, or relocate somewhere that isn't at risk. Which is one of the things that tick me off when cyclones do come around. People all getting stressed out over what people are saying, and how they are trying to "wish" the cyclone upon themselves. Not gonna happen.

A cyclone is one of those things that you cannot avoid in this part of the world it is a fact of life sooner or latter it will happen,(and normally people realize what is most important to them and that is normally their family, after events like Yasi people always say Houses can be replaced, furniture can be replaced and belongings can be replaced, but you cannot replace your family and that is what is most important) as my wife always says "out of bad things good things always come" for us yasi has been a blessing of sorts as it brought us a beautiful new cyclone baby named Yasi Ruby Alice born on the 7th of dec.

Out of all the destruction re-birth happens, the forest are growing back, Tully is being reborn with many new houses as is with most of the Cassowary coast region.

Congrats Dean ...and to the missus also....
soon have enough for a cricket team.

.....and some idiots said it was a fizzer season! We copped nothing like you up here on the south side of Cairns but still managed nearly $1000 damage and the system was too close for comfort even here. I can't imagine what those in the eye went through that night. Words will never do it justice.

Thanks Scott
A look back on Cyclone Yasi Video

I noticed while watching this that some of the footage is from what i had taken during Yasi.

Hi everyone, this is the video I edited together of my experience with Yasi. It's my first shot at editing, so it's a bit rough,but it was such a full on, humbling and surreal experience I wanted to capture my perspective. It was my first experience with a cyclone, having come from the Gold Coast, and I was living on Magnetic Island. BY the time I got really scared and decided I wanted to get my family and I off, the ferries had stopped. No water, electricity or ferries followed. we were on the next ferry out 3 days later and moved to town!

The first 2 photos HERE were taken this morning, over 11 months on from Yasi. These hills are just to the north of Feluga, about 7km north of Tully.

http://open.abc.net.au/projects/aftermath-08vh8ac/contributions/the-house-that-shook-12pv6al

Our interview with the ABC It contains footage we took pre during and post YASI

I purposely don't read or watch anything about Yasi and this is the first time I've read this thread for a long time. Guess I just didn't want to relive it all. Reading RD's posts has brought it all back, especially the comments about the destruction of the gardens. We spent nearly three years clearing our 3 acres of guinea grass and fallen trees, replanting almost 400 native trees and gardens and it was just hearbreaking to think about starting again.

I loved my garden and was devastated at the damage afterwards. We were due to take a 7 month trip to the North of Australia in March and thought we would have to cancel this. However we had good housesitters lined up who were willing to wait until the end of April. It took all that time for us to mostly clear the debris, it was extremely hard work, especially for my husband on the end of a heavy chainsaw day after day. Like RD, I thought at the time I would rather have had the house go. I found the aftermath to be more stressful than the night of Yasi.

Anyway, we took our trp which was just fantastic, although we weren't sure that we wanted to return home. We have been back a month now and feeling better about being home. We have almost cleared those few pockets of remaining debris, repairing the fences will be next. A lot of our smaller trees survived and should power if we have a good wet season (not happening yet). There is no shade and we are having unknown pioneer trees and weeds popping up everywhere, but we are dealing with those. Once the rains come we will replace the missing trees.

Our house is a steel framed, hardiplank clad home on a slab which we built ourselves, so we knew how strong it should be. We thought the weakest points would be the big sliding glass doors and the casement windows on two corners of the kitchen. However we had NO structural damage at all apart from one of the verandah screens blowing in and damaging the fans. We taped up the whirly birds on the roof and removed the TV aerial. The carport didn't move and one of the roller doors on the big 3-bay shed very slightly came off it's tracks - it was an easy job to put it back in place. How we missed having trees fall on the house or shed defies explanation, somebody upstairs was looking after us that night. Snuggled up to the north of the shed there were three other cars parked outside belonging to some people evacuated from town and with us for the night. Not one of these was touched apart from being covered with leaf litter.

We also have a hill to the south of us - the house faces NNE. There was a thick band of trees to the south and forest to the west, and the bulk of trees appeared to be blown over from a roughly easterly direction.

Anyway things are starting to look good again, we just have to get out of the habit of having Yasi entering into our conversation all the time. It seems to be "before Yasi" or "after Yasi" as if that is our only time reference.

We knew that Yasi was predicted to be a Cat 5, but we didn't have really any idea of just how strong and destructive the winds would be, and that feeling of numbing disbelief when viewing the damage the next morning will stay with me forever.

Would we stay if a Cat 4+ was predicted to hit here again - probably not, but who can say?

Really great interview , and so glad you managed to get footage even through the scary stuff. Your kids seemed to go through it really well so hope everyone has come out the other side ok.. I happened to be in Brisbane when it came and not at my home in Ingham forrest beach , but my son & husband were here and i know what you mean about it being better not to watch the tv. My daughter & I stayed up all night watching & I still cant hear Anna Bligh's speeches she made that night without getting teary. Was so worried about my family I think it may have been easier if i was with them .

Well its almost 12months since yasi however i've read some great storys and insights to the build up, night & aftermath!

Im still disapointed in the fact that people who were in cairns say they gone through a cat 5 cyclone.. when in fact our weather obs only reached cat 1 strength winds.. anywere between innisfail - ingham got the force of it and especially dunk island!

I'b be interested to see if anyone recorded any video footage from dunk island ?

As far as I know, they were all evacuated.

What amazed me about the system was the size of the very destructive wind field, that went from innisfail to Townsville.

Very destructive winds is 165kmhr+ I'm pretty sure?

nah things, there were a few staff that were told they have to stay, and apparently it was a absolute nightmare, with the ocean right up to their buildings, and their roofs gone. i believe the staff were given a payout for what they were pretty much forced to go through. ive looked for any videos everywhere, all there was is a video of the damage after it hit.

I've being following the forum for sometime now but never posted.
Thank you for sharing your stories - This was the first Cyclone I can truly remember living through (grew up in Noumea) and certainly the scariest even bunkered here in Townsville. Still haven't brought ourselves to face our property of destroyed lychee trees in Bilyana. Annual leave soon might shed some light on what we're facing.

Yes they were forced to stay despite wanting to leave.Re a payout, I think that might have related to the insurance claim (. I've been meaning to post our footage and an account of our experience.Despite the panic, drama and seriousness of the event, there were some funny moments.( I realised just how shallow I am when having to pack only one garbage bag of treasured possessions when we decided to leave in a hurry!) Also the story about how we sheltered in the underground car park was pretty funny.

Yeah it was huge, south of the system was strong for quiet some distance and you said townsville copped a fair bit aswel.. the north side was weak however so cairns got off very lightly.. cns airport recorded 97kmh gust and our station recorded 76kmh, 10km inland from the airport.

I herd that gordonvale or south cairns white rock area recorded 125kmh gust.

Trav is there a section where we can compile all the weather obs from yasi , eg from cairns right down past townsville

Well off my head mate here goes

Alva beach ( 100kms south of Townsville ) 130kmhr recorded by Brisbane storms

Townsville 163kmhr

InghAm - 214.5kmhr ( recorded by our storm chasing group oz cyclone chasers)

Lucinda - 185kmhr before the AWS failed at 9pm

Seriously?? I did read something about this, but how could they seriously leave people on an island in the path of a cat 5 cyclone?? I hope whoever told them to stay there was taken to court over it!