Clear skies as Jasper anniversary lands
Cyclone Jasper Anniversary
The second anniversary of Cyclone Jasper over the weekend has been marked by near perfect weather, absolutely in contrast to the conditions which impacted Douglas Shire in a way the region had never experienced.
Work continues to take place to return infrastructure to the way it was before Ex Tropical Cyclone Jasper left its mark on the region - the Cook Highway rebuild the most obvious of those projects - the costs of which have run to the hundreds of millions.
And the impact on lives, the learnings gained from the devastation and recovery of the event continue to shape our lives today.
Weather events south of the region, with major flooding of transport routes to Douglas to begin 2025 gave us all a glimpse of that vulnerability, but nothing near the events that were delivered in a direct hit to the district on December 13, 2023.
Severe Tropical Cyclone Jasper was the wettest tropical cyclone in Australian history, surpassing Peter of 1979.
Jasper later reintensified, and on December 13, made landfall as a Category 2 tropical cyclone off the eastern coast of the Cape York Peninsula near Wujal Wujal. Jasper then weakened into an ex-tropical low and remained traceable overland as it moved southeast, and was last noted on December 18.
Throughout Jasper's existence, moderate to locally intense rainfall accompanied the system; the storm dropped very heavy rainfall, peaking at 2,252 mm (88.7 in) at Bairds near the Daintree River.
Many locals used personal watercraft to extract people who were trapped on their roofs within the coastal suburbs. Some flights were cancelled at Cairns Airport. One man died and another went missing due to flooding caused by Jasper. The Insurance Council of Australia estimated that Jasper was responsible for at least AU$1 billion in damages.
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