Cyclone Yasi about to reach Townsville

In Queensland (Australia), its 10.30 on Wednesday evening. On my computer screen here in France, I'm watching the live display from a webcam located in a central-city flat in the city of Townsville. It's one of a series of webcams whose addresses are indicated on the website of The Australian. And I'm apparently sharing this live display with some 11 000 other online viewers.

[Click the image to access the actual webcam display.]

From time to time, in the foreground, I can see the branches of palm trees starting to sway a little in the approaching winds. But everything, for the moment, appears to be deceptively calm.

BREAKING NEWS: It's 11.30 in Queensland. My post was premature, and my remarks about webcams have become totally useless, because every available webcam appears to have got knocked out as soon as the winds arrived, no doubt through power outage, combined with the impossibility of using, say, an iPhone in the darkness. So, I haven't yet figured out whether there's any good means of following what's happening at a visual level. Meanwhile, I was impressed by this photo of kids bedding down for the night on the bare floor of an old cellar:

It's like a third-world war-time image.