Cyclone Glenda On its way to Australia

[LAyZbOi]

Take care Dave and henry!!!!!

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A powerful cyclone with winds up to 300 kph (190 mph) menaced northern parts of Western Australia on Wednesday, less than two weeks after a storm devastated homes and crops on the other side of the country.

Some oil and gas operations and key iron ore ports closed ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Glenda in an area known as "cyclone alley" because it is regularly swept by storms at this time of year.

The storm, ranked in the most powerful grade for cyclones, category five, was about 335 km (210 miles) north of the town of Port Hedland and moving south along the coast, the Tropical Cyclone Warning Center said.

"Tomorrow's really the day where things could happen," said forecaster Adam Conroy from the center in Perth, the capital of Western Australia.

The remote Pilbara region under threat is home to around 10,000 people and includes Woodside Petroleum's A$14 billion ($10 billion) North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) project at Karratha, about 700 km (440 miles) north of Perth.

"Residents of the central and west Pilbara coast are warned of the risk of very destructive winds with gusts exceeding 250 km per hour during Thursday as this very dangerous cyclone nears the coast," the Bureau of Meteorology said on its Web site

Australia's northeastern coast was devastated last week by another category five storm, Cyclone Larry. It blew roofs off houses, uprooted trees and decimated sugar and banana crops, causing damage worth up to A$1.5 billion ($1 billion).

Woodside said on Wednesday that it had suspended production at its 100,000-barrel-per-day Cossack oilfield in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday as the sixth cyclone of the season approached.

Oil and gas producer Santos Ltd. shut its 40,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Mutineer-Exeter oil field on Monday and BHP Billiton's 10,600 bpd Griffin oil field has been closed since Saturday, after it was threatened by a smaller storm.

Mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto both have operations in the Pilbara, which is home to large deposits of iron ore.

Rio said its port operations at Dampier and Cape Lambert had shut and ships had gone out to sea, while BHP said it was loading its last ship and port operations at Port Hedland would close shortly.

Rio said on Tuesday bad weather meant the company would fall 5 million tonnes short of its first-quarter iron ore output target. It still expected 2006 output to rise 14 percent on last year's 158 million tonnes.

[The Judge]

Good Lord, 190 mph winds are far and above what any building in the world are designed to sustain.

God speed to all that are in the path of this storm.

[dave nz]

Thankfully I will be sweet, not near there. Main threat where I live is earthquakes I'm right on a major faultline......Henry will be fine he is not near there either.

God bless those in the storms path hopefully the impact is kept to a minimum.