Going to be a long night tonight.
Watching the live coverage on TV at the moment, things are getting a bit tense. With the immense size of the cyclone it must be hard to put any real distance between yourself and it. At the moment it is about 90km off the coast and is expected to make landfall just after midnight. You have to really feel for the people in NQL, they have been through hell recently, stay strong fellow QLDers!
I think mother nature finally wised up to the fact that you Aussies disarmed yourselves a few years ago 
As a verteran of too many her/him acanes I feel your pain and wish you the best!
Thankfully there haven’t yet been any reports of deaths or serious injuries: link
I called my sister this morning. She’s fine, just some vegetation torn up but no damage to her house. My other sister, in Mt Sheridan which is south Cairns, still has electricity even. Cairns really dodged this time.
It would suck to live in Tully though. 90% of the main street has suffered major damage. Also, Mission Beach, where I heard one person say her neighbour’s house ended up a heap of junk in her back yard.
Yay…looks like the initial catastrophic predictions were not borne out in reality. Lots of damage in Mission Beach, Tully and Cardwell, but minimal in the major centres of Cairns and Townsville.
And the very best thing? No-body has been seriously injured or killed in the storm.
(That being said, I just experienced my very own ‘mini-cyclone’ (in actuality, a nasty shit of a thunderstorm) here about an hour ago. And the bloody BOM hadn’t issued any warning until 5 minutes before the bastard hit…by which time I was already looking up at the skies and running around the yard to pick up any loose debris. The wind speeds were horrendous, and the scene looked JUST like at the height of the cyclone last night in FNQ…trees bent over backwards, and the rain sheeting down horizontally. Thankfully it only lasted perhaps 20 minutes, but I am now minus all the shade-cloth on my pergola AND a few of the battens to boot. Looks like I lost a couple of young trees too).
Bloody Hughie…piss off ya old bastard. 
Early reports are promising, sounds like the worst of the storm missed the most populated areas. No reports of any deaths or serious injuries so far. Fingers crossed.
Looking at the track on this report, Yasi couldn’t have done a better job of squeezing in between the two cities of Cairns and Townsville. Sadly, two people have been reported missing.
Godspeed, Australia.