roof torn open

car crushed under iron and trees

trees and powerlines down, Palmerston Street.

iron roofing

close up

walls torn apart

my backyard, trampoline moved 20m across the yard, tree in back left snapped in half

neighbours trampoline ended up 5m off the ground in a tree

Amazing pictures mick, I'm speechless...

Breezed I agree, imagine if this happend at 8am peak hour. It's scary to think. Mick I can't beleive how the debris have impacted the house. Imagine what the people inside we're thinking?

I was with cyclone testing station people from JCU this morning. First with that house on corner of Fulham Rd and Ashton Street was worst one. That house was classified as rate of E2 which can hold winds up to 210km/hr. It survived Yasi, Noah and Athena. Its quite obvious, even this tornado did something more than 210km/hr mark......

I don't think anyone is doubting that this was indeed a tornado. The system likely touched down very close to the west of the Townsville Met Office - how the hell there was no visual from there at 5AM is beyond belief, but a matter for a different day!!!

I think the issue is just how strong this was, whether they rate it as an EF1 or EF2 I think is the biggest decision. Personally I think it will gain a low EF2 rating based on some of the damage photos.

What do you base that on Nitso?

i spoke to one man on clements cres who said he kept hearing all these thuds hitting his house. he risked looking outside to see Ibis birds smashing against his outside walls. sadly there were dead and injured birds all over the place. most of them became flying missles. dead carcasses were clogging up the gutters.

Great pics, Mick. I have to admit that I had a little chuckle to myself this morning when I saw that trampoline lodged so high up the tree. Credit should be given to the emergency services for how well they have handled this event. When we did the morning school run there were already chippers and plenty of heavy machinery pitching in at Vincent Primary and all surrounding areas. And the police have been great. Admittedly, I wasn't impressed when I sat in the car for 10 minutes only metres from our street waiting for them to turn around all the rubber-neckers in front of us and having to whip out the ID every time I enter the street is a pain but it has freed up the emergency crews to get in and get things done for which we are truly appreciative.

awesome pics mick, it really does look like a mess down there. all the signs are of it being a tornado, but does a tornado last 10 minutes?

Thanks for pointing out a major oversight there!

Sorry mate... what I meant is how did you decipher this as a tornado... the pics?
Are there not other alternatives such as a downdraft?

They can last hours and travel over 300km.

I have been racking the brain, there is a traffic camera at Blakeys(it's currently out but was it this morning?), pointing west so it must be at the airport end to be of any use, mounted on the traffic lights??? Could have captured touchdown dependant on lighting and it's own performance. Other traffic cameras around the place that aren't available for public viewing would be another source possibly, main roads may have captured something interesting depending on areas of power loss vs track and timing. Looking at RD's map of the path, I would imagine there are several businesses along the path that would indeed have video surveilence, again if they did/didn't capture anything would be dependant on camera position, performance(low light ccd would be prefered I guess), power loss(maybe someone was running a UPS?) ect. It's a needle in a hay stack but it may well be there and of course the race against the clock began long ago depending on archive length...if any???


So sorry I couldn't be of more help!

the pictures are amazing

The wind speed is the biggest give away we get plenty of cat1's and tropical lows that sustain 100km/hr wind bursts for hours and dont even do this kind of damage. Wind gusts would have to have been near 200km/hr, as suggested, it does appears it was a decent sized ciruculation centre which may have had mutliple cores a very erractic path although with a directional trend, and short lifetime. To top it off it was very late in the night.

sorry, i meant how long would it take to pass over someones house?

I believe debris are a good indication that it was a Tornado.
I also believe if a microburst had lasted the 5-10 mins everyone is saying the event lasted for, then we would have seen more consistent widespread devastation.

guessing it would have been moving fairly slowly, walking speed, given the distance it travelled in 10 minutes

Thats like asking how long a piece of string is. But for a wild guess, anywhere from 0.2s to 1 min. It depends on so many factors. Nitso could probably help you with this lol.

A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone,[1] although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider sense, to name any closed low pressure circulation. Tornadoes come in many shapes and sizes, but are typically in the form of a visible condensation funnel, whose narrow end touches the earth and is often encircled by a cloud of debris and dust. Most tornadoes have wind speeds less than 110 miles per hour (177 km/h), are approximately 250 feet (76 m) across, and travel a few miles (several kilometers) before dissipating. The most extreme tornadoes can attain wind speeds of more than 300 mph (480 km/h), stretch more than two miles (3.2 km) across, and stay on the ground for dozens of miles (more than 100 km).[2][3][4]
Various types of tornadoes include the landspout, multiple vortex tornado, and waterspout. Waterspouts are characterized by a spiraling funnel-shaped wind current, connecting to a large cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud. They are generally classified as non-supercellular tornadoes that develop over bodies of water.[5] These spiraling columns of air frequently develop in tropical areas close to the equator, and are less common at high latitudes.[6] Other tornado-like phenomena that exist in nature include the gustnado, dust devil, fire whirls, and steam devil.
Tornadoes have been observed on every continent except Antarctica. However, the vast majority of tornadoes in the world occur in the Tornado Alley region of the United States, although they can occur nearly anywhere in North America.[7] They also occasionally occur in south-central and eastern Asia, the Philippines, south east Asia, like Malaysia,[8] northern and east-central South America, Southern Africa, northwestern and southeast Europe, western and southeastern Australia, and New Zealand.[9] Tornadoes can be detected before or as they occur through the use of Pulse-Doppler radar by recognizing patterns in velocity and reflectivity data, such as hook echoes, as well as by the efforts of storm spotters.
There are several different scales for rating the strength of tornadoes. The Fujita scale rates tornadoes by damage caused, and has been replaced in some countries by the updated Enhanced Fujita Scale. An F0 or EF0 tornado, the weakest category, damages trees, but not substantial structures. An F5 or EF5 tornado, the strongest category, rips buildings off their foundations and can deform large skyscrapers. The similar TORRO scale ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes.[10] Doppler radar data, photogrammetry, and ground swirl patterns (cycloidal marks) may also be analyzed to determine intensity and assign a rating.[11]

It was moving as fast as the parent storm was which was around 40-50kmhr from memory.