Cyclone

It is Merril’s turn to pick a word from the dictionary.  She did that before we came over here but I have forgotten the word.  It was tremendously obscure.  I had never heard of it and I know I need to do some study of it before I can write anything.
So I decided I would choose a word from things around me.  The word was wood as there are so many trees and the houses contain a fair bit of wood, but one thing led to another and I got to thinking of the wood affected in the cyclone I went through in Townsville.
It was a dozy.  The way to know how bad it is is to go through one.  My brother was holidaying in the south and Althea (the cyclone we went through) was the headline in the newspaper.  He remembers the lady in front of him getting the paper and saying there is nothing in the news.
Maybe for someone thousands of kilometres away there seemed to be nothing but what we went through I would not wish on anyone.
I became quiet closely acquainted with the floor under the dining room table.  The wind howled.  Merril and I were holidaying in Mooloolaba when the remnants of a cyclone went down the coast.  The power in that storm was enough to see that something bigger could be very devastating.
Our house suffered minimal damage, but the one next door was completely demolished.  There was a family in there and the dad sent the wife and kids over to our place before it got to its worst.  The father eventually came over.  He knew it was time to come when for some reason he was moving a cupboard and the wall started coming towards him.
It was incredibly dramatic.  My dad was on the phone for some reason.  It was in the days when being without a landline meant no communication at all.  The person on the end of the line said they had just lost their roof.  At that moment we heard a bang on our roof and dad exclaimed so have we and the line went dead.
Turned out it was actually the house next door that had lost its roof.  It sailed over our roof and landed in the vacant allotment next door.
We were without power after it for a number of days.  The family that had come to our place and lost everything were put up in a local hotel.  I would never wish what happened to them on anyone but if it is to happen then being looked after the way they were is the way to go.
It is the only one I have been through but in North Queensland we would watch cyclones closely as we knew what they were capable of.