How much can Australia be expected to endure?

...At 1:00 a.m. Queensland (click title to entry - thank you ) time on February 2, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that Yasi was roughly 450 nautical miles (835 kilometers) east-northeast of Cairns, Australia. Sporting a well-defined eye, Yasi had maximum sustained winds of 120 knots (220 kilometers per hour) and gusts up to 145 knots (270 kilometers per hour). True to earlier forecasts, favorable conditions led the storm to intensify rapidly over the Pacific Ocean....

Since 1899, (click here) there have been seven severe storms of this magnitude in Australia; five of which were from 1975.  This will make three since 2005, the year of Katrina in the northern hemisphere.

People pack a shopping mall used as a evacuation shelter in Cairns, Australia, Feb. 2 before cyclone Yasi hits. 
(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

...The storm (click here) will compound misery in Queensland, which has already been hit by months of flooding that killed 35 people and inundated hundreds of communities. Cyclone Yasi is due to hit north of the main waterlogged area, but emergency services are already stretched and the whole state is flood-weary.

"This is a cyclone of savagery and intensity," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a nationally televised news conference as the storm moved toward the coast. "People are facing some really dreadful hours in front of them."

The first winds began howling throughout Cairns as night fell Wednesday, with the storm expected to make landfall sometime around midnight....