Cyclone Yasi, having winds of up to three hundred km or one hundred and eighty six miles per hour, has already got its page in the history of severe storms, prior to its approach to the Australian coast.

Moving on straight for cities on the northeast coast, it is one of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded and is thought to be the largest one to head for major Australian population centers.

Yasi is expected to hit small tourist cities like Townsville and Cairns later on Wednesday. Yasi is a "category 5" cyclone. It is the highest rating possible and the first such storm to hit cyclone-prone Queensland coast at this force after the year of 1918.

Here are the names of some other big cyclones to have hit Australia in recorded history, along with a description of the five cyclone categories. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina, which ransacked New Orleans in the year of
2005, is also listed.

Cyclone Mahina had hit in 1989 which is Australia's deadliest. It battered the far northeast coast of Queensland, claiming more than four hundred lives, where the crews of around one hundred pearling vessels were included. It still is reckoned as the country's deadliest natural disaster, as per one government Web site.

Cyclone Tracy, Category 4, had hit the country in 1974 and the most destructive one. It battered the small northern city of Darwin in the early hours of Christmas Day with wind gusts of up to 250 km per hour, destroying or badly damaging more than seventy percent of the city's buildings. Tracy also killed seventy one people and injured six hundred and fifty, though it was relatively small compared with Yasi.

Other cyclones like Larry, Joan, two unknown cyclones in the summer of 1918, Ingrid, Olivia and hurricane Katrina all had devastated the country in the twentieth and twenty first century.