As the crisis unfolds

We interrupt your regular broadcasting to bring you this breaking news.

1000km off the north Queensland coast there is a low pressure system that might, if the winds hold and the atmospheric pressure stays constant and the monsoon trough doesn't move and Jupiter aligns with Mars, turn into a cyclone sometime during this week. There is the very real possibility that it might come over the Queensland coast at some point between Cape York and Brisbane.

Our rolling coverage of sweet bugger all starts with Jemma Alford live from Townsville.

Jemma: Thanks Bert and allow me to congratulate you on "very real possibility" in that intro and segue; conveys a sense of urgency and crisis without actually saying anything at all. Let me continue to build an atmosphere of impending catastrophe by delivering a report laced with words like "braced", "anxious" and "smashes".

Well, as you can see, the locals here in Townsville are going about their daily lives pretty much as usual but out there, just off the coast, catastrophe could well be building. Let's inject some verisimilitude at this point by cutting to an interview with a meteorologist standing in front of some computers showing some high tech graphics of swirling clouds and other geeky sciency stuff.

Meteorologist: Well there's nothing there at the moment but, yes, the possibility does exist that a cyclone could form out there in the Coral Sea over the next few days. It's a very unstable situation out there at the moment and the level of uncertainty is high.

Jemma: An unstable and uncertain situation, something that will be preying on the minds of anxious locals here over the next few days.

Bert: Thanks Jemma. We will cross back to Jemma for further updates as the situation unfolds. In the meantime, let's try to give the illusion of substance to our fact-free diet here by showing you a montage of shots from previous cyclones. We'll add some dramatic music and a three-testicle voice over to enhance the effect. For those not really paying attention or actually listening to anything we're saying, you'll start to believe that we genuinely have something to talk about.

[montage]

Bert: I'll just nod a bit with a meaningful and concerned look on my face for a few seconds to add gravitas to that. We'll cross now to the Queensland Premier who has flown to the site of the hypothetical disaster, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and hard hat to make it look like he's going to do something useful.

Premier: Certainly this is a potentially grave time for Queenslanders. I've activated the emergency plan and the people in our ops centre are standing by ready to assist. There's a bit of stock footage of the centre available if you need to give viewers the sense of people rushing around managing things. There will be a crisis meeting of the state cabinet this afternoon.

Bert: The Premier there. I'll avoid asking the obvious question about how a meeting, crisis or otherwise, is going to make an iota of difference to anyone - particularly because cyclones are well known in this part of the world and the plans have been in place for years. Back to Jemma now in Townsville.

Jemma: Thanks Bert. That last point is particularly telling. I was going to interview the head of the local SES but he refused to say anything like "potentially destructive" or "urgent preparations" or "expecting widespread damage" so we had to let him go. I have with me, instead, the head of the local amateur meteorologists and cyclone obsessives group, Mr Jed Tyler. Mr Tyler, do we have a real crisis on our hands here?

Jed Tyler: Certainly, Jemma. All the modeling shows a storm crossing the coast sometime between 2 and 2.30 AM on Monday. It should cross just over us here in Townsville.

Jemma: How strong is it likely to be?

Jed: I think this is the bit where you asked me to mention Cyclone Yasi? Excellent. Well, we're looking at a system that's a category1 or 2 but could spin up to category 3 which is similar to what we experienced here in Townsville during Cyclone Yasi which was a 4. We had a lot of damage in that storm. A lot of Townsville is low lying and areas like here on the beach could well cop the brunt of the storm. Storms at category 3 or even 4 are very destructive and if we were to get one, we would certainly see large numbers of houses damaged, trees down and many thousands of people would have to be evacuated.

Jemma: Thanks Jed, that was fantastic. Lots of good emotive words and vivid imagery there and we know from experience that the viewing audience will ignore the qualifiers and the uncertainty and just gorge themselves on the sense of vicarious panic. Back to you Bert.

Bert: Yes Jemma, well done there. Local residents will certainly be bracing themselves in preparation for the cyclone which could slam into the coast any time over the next few days. We return you now to your regular scheduled programming.