Cyclone Alfred - Brisbane Australia

[Wil Tryharder]

So Cyclone Alfred is about 28 hours away from slamming into the SE QLD coast. Looks like it’s going to make landfall on the City of Brisbane. Currently Cat2. There’s a couple of islands off the coast, called North and South Stradbroke islands. They could take a bit of sting out of it, but thats clutching at straws really.
We spent the last couple of days moving loose items to the shed/indoors. The gutters and drains have been cleaned. Sandbags are filled and in place. House battery is fully charged and isolated ready for use on a select couple of circuits including the fridge and kettle. Tea and pot noodle if needed. The pizza oven gas tanks are full. Windows are taped. A bath is full of water should the local water provider have issues (almost inevitably). Our local water is pump fed not gravity fed. Australia being generally flat as a pancake.
Oh I almost forgot, the MG4 is charged up and it’s V2L capability is ready to be used if needed. Can’t tell you how smug that makes me feel compared to my neighbours with their 3L turbo diesels, going nowhere coz the roads will be impassable for 3 or 4 days.
It looks like we’ll be on the northern edge of it, as it passes inland. Which is way better than being on the southern side. Although anything can happen in the last couple of hours. There’s going to be a lot of wind for sure, but probably way more rainfall than the weather channels are quoting.
The neighbours have been called on and they’re all sorted. So if you don’t mind I’ll have a ‘calm before the storm’ beer and report back over the weekend.

 

[salty]

Good luck. Hope all goes well, and it's a, relatively "nice" Cyclone.

 

[ReintjeWA]

Best of luck mate!

 

[wattmatters]

Alfred is tracking back north again, these systems are so unpredictable...

We are a fair way south and outside the expected danger zone but expect a LOT of rain with moderate to major flooding over the coming days.



Hope all our northern friends stay safe.

 

[Checo]

Yes, it is reassuring to have a charged MG4 in the garage and a V2L cable on hand, given that it's likely we will be without power for days...

 

[securespark]

Oh, heck.

I wish everyone in that neck of the woods well.

 

[Eagle5]

yes best of luck to you all,i am currently also in Australia awaiting news of any flight out of Brisbane,supposed to be leaving 14:30 7th march !!(back to London)Eagle5.

 

[pfaus]

Yes, we’re at Tweed Heads and have the MG4 charged up in case we need V2L.
Conditions are very much up and down but it seems worse is still to come.

 

[wattmatters]

We are about to hit the 12-2 PM free energy period so will be charging up the home and car batteries as much as I can.

Home battery likely won't get to full charge today because of poor solar output (it didn't get there yesterday either) so I may dump some back from the car into it later today, discharge car down to 80%.

I have 15 kWh of regular daily cycling capacity and another 20 kWh of lead acid battery in reserve. Plus the car, plus the generator.

 

[wattmatters]

Sucking down the juice in prep:

 

[wattmatters]

At end of the free period the car got to 93% and the home battery got to ~ 90% so now I'm sending some of the car's excess charge back into the home battery via V2L and a charger.

Set the car's discharge limit to 80% SOC but it won't need that much.

Charging at ~1.6 kW into the home battery which needs ~ 3 kWh to get to 100%. Car has ~8.3 kWh to spare so it will do that comfortably, even though it's not an efficient process.

Last I checked it was drawing ~2.3 kW from the drive battery, but that would be partly due to doing an auxiliary 12 V battery charge which should drop away after a while.

 

[decrep]

Nervous wait for you guys, but looks like you're better prepared than most.
Maybe in the aftermath, the benefits of V2L will be appreciated.

 

[decrep]

On my windsurfing forum, some mad kiter is thinking about Kiting in the Brisbane River. Not sure how that will work, at the moment he's complaining about not enough wind.

 

[Coulomb]

at the moment he's complaining about not enough wind.

That should pick up in an hour or two, and then they'll be right in line for a Darwin Award!

 

[securespark]

Crazy Farquhar....

 

[decrep]

He hasn't updated since 0630 hope he's OK

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

He hasn't updated since 0630 hope he's OK

Expect his next post to be from Tasmania!

 

[Coulomb]

He hasn't updated since 0630 hope he's OK

It's keeping us in suspense. We get periods of totally calm weather, even a few minutes of sun. Then heavy rain for 5 minutes, then... anything.

The cyclone is having a great time doing loop the loops, changing course... The latest I heard is that it will cross the coast Saturday morning. It's most unusual for a cyclone to come this far south. But I guess it's part of the new normal.

Here is a recent map showing the loop and a zigzag:

Some people watching the waves from a visitor's centre:

Right now it's calm here in Southern Brisbane.

[ Edit: Update map with a wilder loop-the-loop and a zig-zag. ]

 

[wattmatters]

Charging at ~1.6 kW into the home battery which needs ~ 3 kWh to get to 100%. Car has ~8.3 kWh to spare so it will do that comfortably, even though it's not an efficient process.

Turned out I only drained 2.4 kWh from the drive battery. Weather was weird, just as Coulomb described:

We get periods of totally calm weather, even a few minutes of sun. Then heavy rain for 5 minutes, then... anything.

Which meant that we actually got a bit more from solar PV that I thought. Anyway, with the car's help the home battery was fully charged by 3:45 PM and the car is still at 89.3% SOC, so I'll bleed off some more of that today as we won't be driving anywhere I suspect for a couple of days.

Lower part of town is on evacuation watch and that usually coincides with roads also being cut in the usual spots. The bridge between north and south side of town goes under water and the road connecting us to the Pacific Highway gets cut. But this is such a slow moving system - which just means more time to dump rain. We could get up to half a meter of rain over next few days.

 

[QLeo]

So Cyclone Alfred is about 28 hours away from slamming into the SE QLD coast. Looks like it’s going to make landfall on the City of Brisbane. Currently Cat2. There’s a couple of islands off the coast, called North and South Stradbroke islands. They could take a bit of sting out of it, but thats clutching at straws really.
We spent the last couple of days moving loose items to the shed/indoors. The gutters and drains have been cleaned. Sandbags are filled and in place. House battery is fully charged and isolated ready for use on a select couple of circuits including the fridge and kettle. Tea and pot noodle if needed. The pizza oven gas tanks are full. Windows are taped. A bath is full of water should the local water provider have issues (almost inevitably). Our local water is pump fed not gravity fed. Australia being generally flat as a pancake.
Oh I almost forgot, the MG4 is charged up and it’s V2L capability is ready to be used if needed. Can’t tell you how smug that makes me feel compared to my neighbours with their 3L turbo diesels, going nowhere coz the roads will be impassable for 3 or 4 days.
It looks like we’ll be on the northern edge of it, as it passes inland. Which is way better than being on the southern side. Although anything can happen in the last couple of hours. There’s going to be a lot of wind for sure, but probably way more rainfall than the weather channels are quoting.
The neighbours have been called on and they’re all sorted. So if you don’t mind I’ll have a ‘calm before the storm’ beer and report back over the weekend.

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We have friends and family in your area, so we're sitting 10000 miles away watching the weather info closely. Two nieces are sort of in harm's way, one near the coast, but hopefully as you say sheltered by Stradbroke. Another near a river, which might not be ideal. And herself's elderly Mum a little further inland, so hopefully will not be as badly affected, but she's blind and if the power goes, food and drink may be an issue.
Hope you don't need your MG's power for too long, and that everyone comes through this unscathed.
Also hope governments around the world grow up enough so that these events don't become more frequent.