Tropical cyclone Yasi seen off the coast of Australia, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011.
The weather bureau says Cyclone Yasi is a large and very powerful tropical cyclone and poses an "extremely serious threat" to life and property within the warning area, especially between Port Douglas and Townsville.
"This impact is likely to be more life-threatening than any experienced during recent generations," the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said this morning.
Tens of thousands of people are fleeing their homes ahead of the monster storm, which is expected to hit the coast between Cairns and Innisfail some time tonight.
This morning it was estimated to be 650 kilometres east north-east of Cairns and 650 kilometres north-east of Townsville, moving west south-west at 30 kilometres per hour.
"There's still potential for it to become stronger ... as a strong category five we could see wind gusts in excess of 320 kilometres an hour (200mph). Which is just horrific."
Comment: I've just remembered that a similar event was filmed in Kazakhstan last year:
Note the date: June 30th, the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska cometary explosion over remote Siberia.
Our Connecting the Dots series discussed this other Kazakhstan event last summer.
Now, most Internet buzz seemed to connect this with the UFO that shut down Xiaoshan airport in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on the same night. In fact, the two events were generally confused as being one and the same. Here's a photo of the UFO over Hangzhou:
...but cometary fragments have been reported throughout history of performing 'unnatural' maneuvers themselves, sometimes slowing almost to a halt as they put on their show for us.
You have to wonder about spectacular mass 'UFO sightings' occurring at precisely the same times as these infinitely weirder visions entering or skirting our atmosphere.
Can we say "Cosmic COINTELPRO"?