Sketches for 'Rusty'
As most of you are probably aware that Tropical Cyclone Rusty crossed the Pilbara coast line at Pardoo at 5pm on Wednesday February 27 2013. It was a large slow system that for days had Port Hedland well within it sight. Thankfully a late change of course saw the system move the east sparing Hedland leaving the tiny town of Pardoo to bear the brunt of the category four monster.
I followed cyclone updates on both the Bureau of Meteorology website and the Oz Cyclone Chasers Facebook page from the safety of a friends two bedroom unit. We made the decision to evacuate, prompted by a visit from the SES at 8am Tuesday morning. Unbeknown to us our departure was at the most intense point of the cyclone. For the following thirty hours Rusty sat off the coast and nothing happened. We sat, we watched, we waited. It was tedious. We were on red alert (lock down), while outside was equivalent to a windswept day in Melbourne. It was the uncertainty of where it would make landfall that kept us a little on edge and constantly checking updates.
Wind gusts of up to 160km/h lashed the Pardoo station while a record 320mm of rain fell in one day. Hedland experienced its coldest summer day of 23.9C (for the record, I had a jumper AND socks on), and also recorded 40 consecutive hours of gale winds during Rusty's visit.
The above image is a model taken from the Oz Cyclone Chasers Facebook page. It is of predicted rainfall and barometric pressure with the town of Port Hedland clearly in its path. This image will replace the two previous images that I had already begun painting for the Cossack Art Prize, and with the cyclone season at an end, it is definitely the final one.
