28000 people evacuated. I can't begin to imagine what it's like up North right now as folks prepare to be battered by the biggest and meanest cyclones in generations. Waiting. Waiting. Knowing that this monster is creeping their way, bringing wind gusts in excess of 280 kms per hour, tidal surges 7 meters above normal and rain in deluge proportions. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

And by some perverse twist of nature, we will receive some beautiful, long interval swell 1600 kms from all this destruction.

Apart from increased floods and potential property damage, this is why some of us are busy tracking the course of the current cyclones - Deam Brady above at Boiling Pot, Cyclone Uluie March 2010.

Same spot almost 30 years before during Cyclone Freda - a cyclone that tracked the coaast for two weeks and sat way out near Vanuatu, March 1981 enabling the swell to organise itself into pulsing sets. The boards are better - the crowds are worse. Patience and respect, a must.

Yew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

(and it's not the fumes speaking, or is it?)

Double post today as there'll be nothing from me tomorrow. All will be revealed the day after that - providing that the tricky Mayan calendar means 2012 will be the end of the world and not 2010. 

At least the surf is UP. Yew!!!!!!!!

And a long way to the north

two cyclones spin their stereophonic vibrations

promising wind and rain and

SWELL.