When the Sky Breaks by Simon Winchester

Author:Simon Winchester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-12-15T17:45:31+00:00

In the western north Pacific, however, atmospheric violence measured by intensely low eye pressure is much more common. Since 1950 there have been fifty-nine fully formed typhoons north of the equator. There have been twenty-five similarly rated cyclones in the western south Pacific and off Australia since 1975. In the Atlantic, sub-925-millibar storms occur about once every five years. In the western Pacific, they are an annual event.

As the citizens of the Australian city of Darwin came to know only too well.

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IN THE 1970s, Darwin was a tough little frontier town at the far Top End of Australia. Over the years it had suffered gamely through a variety of storms, natural and man-made. (During World War II, more Japanese bombs rained down on Darwin than on Pearl Harbor.) The weather in Darwin is perpetually hot and humid; the summertime rainy season that Darwinians still call “the wet” is frequently ripped apart by spectacular tropical thunderstorms. Cyclones are part of the usual pattern of midsummer weather—a midsummer that occurs in mid-December rather than July, since the city of Darwin is in the southern hemisphere.

When a gathering storm was first noticed out in the Arafura Sea off Darwin’s northern seashore, at the start of a blisteringly hot Christmas week of 1974, no one thought it was anything special. The storm out in the sea was just a small one, and it was heading south, well away from the city. There would be rain in the western suburbs, perhaps, and fine displays of lightning. But that wasn’t unusual; Darwin always had rain and lightning at this time of year. Each summer season had a full dozen cyclone alerts, and each time the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) sounded its sirens, the announcer went on air with the usual warnings about tying down loose objects and filling the bathtub with emergency water. Everyone heard but few listened. The ABC was crying wolf, people grumbled. In 1974, as in years before, the locals were so familiar with bad weather, they generally took little notice of the radio.

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