Australian Fires

[edcayton]

Just heard how bad it is on the news. I hope our Australian friends are all OK.

 

Ed

[Horsetan]

I had a message from DougN about it. All quite overwhelming, though he's seen it all before.

[kevinlms]

They've added a new colour to display on weather maps, for when the temperature is expected to exceed 50 degrees C.

 

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/temperatures-off-the-charts-as-australia-turns-deep-purple-20130108-2ce33.html

 

In Melbourne milder temps tomorrow with a max predicted of 20 degrees, but 37 by Friday.

 

 

Anyone for a flight to Wudinna Areo South Australia, where it reached 48.2 last Friday?

 

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW5073.latest.shtml

[69843]

The fires out here are bad, but not the worst. Luckily, with the big fires down in Tasmania, there has been no reported fatalities yet.

 

As far as I am aware, three states (including N.S.W.) have bushfires going. We are all preying that none of them turn sour, and it looks as though the firefighters have them all under control for the moment.

 

We just had a low-40s day in Sydney, with the heatwave to flair up again soon. Thank goodness for air conditioning!

[SHMD]

My parents relate(d) a story of when we were little (My parents brought up 4 of us in the late 60s/70s.). There was a “total fire ban” on in Victoria and bush fire within 2 miles of home! Mum and Dad decides to head for the beach only for there to be a shark alert on at the time!!

 

I was way too small and happily oblivious at the time!

 

I really wish all is/goes well down there.

 

 

Kev.

[Ozexpatriate]

The 'new normal' seasonal return of >40°C January weather across the southern half of Australia is dire.

 

Despite the fact that the cycle of drought, fire and flood* is, and always was, part of the fabric of rural Australian life the heat waves and their attendant bushfires of recent years seem to be more intense.

 

I am hoping the worst is over for this season, but that seems a bit optimistic, given that we're not halfway through January.

 

 

 

 

* Which puts me in mind of Thomas E. Spencer and some of his 19th century 'bush poetry' which might be recognizable to some:

But the climate is erratic, and the consequences are
The struggle with the elements is everlasting war.
We plough, and sow, and harrow - then sit down and pray for rain;
And then we get all flooded out and have to start again.

[Gwiwer]

Fires are normal for much of Australia.  We have eucalypt forests and scrub as indigenous vegetation and which need fire to reproduce.  Eucalypt oil burns at very high temperatures, burning embers are very light in weight and travel miles ahead of a fire-front on the wind and start spot fires.  Where the native growth has been cleared or in areas where it never existed we have grass.  Hundreds of miles of it.  This burns very fast though the fires as less spectacular than the bush fires often featured on news reports.

 

Fires can be started by lightning strikes, including from "dry storms" where there is lightning but no rain.  They can be started days, weeks or even months before a hot dry spell with high winds causes a smouldering hot spot to erupt into a major fire.  Some are started as a result of human activity.  Discarded matches or cigarette butts are an obvious cause but the contact of hot farm machinery exhaust on tinder-dry grass can cause ignition and so can a stray spark from grinding, welding or even vehicle exhaust or as an arc drawn by an electric train.  The contact of steel wheel on steel rail or the friction of brake blocks can start fires along railways.

 

For these reasons we are subject to days of total fire ban when the risk is extremely high with such processes as angle-grinding and weldng banned along with outdoor cooking other than on a private gas or electric barbecue with a reticulated water supply on hand.  Penalties are severe for non-compliance as indeed they are for deliberately lighting fires.  Some fires are deliberately lit every year and more than one in recent years has been found to have been lit by a member of the fire-fighting force!

 

In the past few days Tasmania has taken the brunt of the fire losses with one small town nearly wiped out, 100 people not accounted for but believed to be safe having left the area before the fire came through.  In Victoria a small numbner of homes has been lost in the Ballarat region and a large fire has burned in the remote south-west without loss of property.  In New South Wales which has had the worst of the fire weather in the past days a large number of fires has been burning but largely without immediate threat to life or property; one home has been lost despite there being over 130 separate fires.  No lives are confirmed lost anywhere; a few fire fighters are reported slightly hurt and some members of the public have suffered smoke inhalation.

 

The images make dramatic news footage and the danger should not be under-estimated but Australians are used to living with these conditions.  There will be more as the hot summer period extends until at least the end of February.  But comapred with the 2009 "Black Saturday" bush fires in which 173 Victorians lost theoir lives and something like 3000 homes and 10,000 vehicles were destroyed we have escaped lightly this time.  Cooler air with some rain has crosed the affected states in the past few hours brining some much-needed relief.

[kevinlms]

Hot weather continues in Queensland & New South Wales.

 

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/queensland-towns-vie-for-heat-peak-20130113-2cnal.html

 

So 49 in Birdsville & a mere 48.8 in Thargomindah.

 

Local "Nigel", who was cooling down at the Birdsville Hotel bar but was shy about giving his surname, said it was so hot ‘‘the trees are chasing the dogs’’.

 

‘‘Hoping that they pee on ‘em,’’ he said.

 

 

He predicted a cool change would come through - in June.

 

Says it all really.

[Gwiwer]

Inland NSW and QLD have become very hot as there has been no cloud build-up over central Australia.  Cooler air is spreading slowly from the south with a little patchy rain and many places are forecast to have at least a little respite in coming days.  It will even drop below 40 degrees in Bourke for a few days!  

 

The remains of Tropical Cyclone Narelle should swing around the southern coastline in coming days also bringing cooler and wetter conditions to many areas by the end of January.  The interior is unlikely to cool significantly until the summer season ends and as such we may well see more and significant fires.  So far very little residential property has been impacted with the bulk of those losses still those in Tasmania and near Ballarat in Victoria.