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Cyclone Tracy and "Santa Never Made it into Darwin"

Source unknownThe current floods in Queensland, Australia, are another in the extremes of fire and water that hit Australia (earlier post here). Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin, Australia, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1974. It killed 71 people, destroyed over 70% of the buildings in Darwin, left another 20,000-25,000 people homeless, and caused over $800 Australian 1974 dollars damage. It spurred a priority to develop cyclone-proof buildings. Many of the survivors were evacuated to other towns and never returned to Darwin. The storm was an unusually compact cyclone, with gale-force winds extending less than 50 km from the center; the graphic on the right shows the relative sizes of Tracy (look hard for the small dot in the middle of Texas, right above the T in Tropical) and Super Typhoon Tip. There's a good Wiki article on Cyclone Tracy here, so I'll not repeat the info.
Relative typhoon sizes. Public domain, NOAA.
The event was so traumatic for Australians that it made it into the popular media. Here's a link to a song describing the effects, sung by Bill (Cate) and Boyd (Robinson). It was a fund-raiser for the reconstruction effort. Sometimes a scientific explanation can't compete!

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