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Australian heat waves & bushfires

we haven’t made it up there! Staying in Melbourne which is horrible because of the smoke. Was meant to be heading there in a week. Then in to Sydney via Canberra. My friend has left Canberra today and said the smoke is awful and advised us to take masks.

hopefully this weekend will offer some rain/respite for them all.

Fingers crossed hey :) it's weird because the temp drops from 40 to 16 over sat night on the forecast. So I'm expecting that's when the cold air or whatever will come rushing in and make it worse?
 
I went for a walk today. Though the bush tracks are closed (for the next two days) due to fire risk, so I diverted and walked around the coast. Air and visibility not too bad and only 28-29C, but then the breeze has predominately been blowing from the ocean/East. Tomorrow 43C forecast, wind from the WNW.
 
Fingers crossed hey :) it's weird because the temp drops from 40 to 16 over sat night on the forecast. So I'm expecting that's when the cold air or whatever will come rushing in and make it worse?

my friend was talking about going back to a Metung on Sunday and I was sceptical that they’d be allowed in. Her hubby is due back at work on Monday!
 
my friend was talking about going back to a Metung on Sunday and I was sceptical that they’d be allowed in. Her hubby is due back at work on Monday!

The state of disaster rules last a week, so likely not be allowed back until next Friday? Who knows hey...

Having said that I think maybe that was put in place partly to get rid of all the holiday makers. If you live and work somewhere and it's safe you'd be allowed back
 
I went for a walk today. Though the bush tracks are closed (for the next two days) due to fire risk, so I diverted and walked around the coast. Air and visibility not too bad and only 28-29C, but then the breeze has predominately been blowing from the ocean/East. Tomorrow 43C forecast, wind from the WNW.

Have you looked on BOM ? Why does the temp go from 40 to 16 from one day to the next . I'd if like a nuclear winter!
 
Wind direction changes to southerly in the early hours of Sunday and brings cooler air up along the SE fringes from a strong low pressure system in the Southern Ocean.

So does that mean things will calm down a bit after them? :)
 
Bushfires continue to burn ferociously. Homes are evacuated. Few western allies mentioned above have sent fire fighters to help. What can the fire fighters do without their apparatus. My analogy of war is quite relevant to fight these bushfires. You have to fight them from air and ground. For that, you need firefighting aircrafts and fire trucks, and of course water. To get things in a perspective, the environmental and property losses of these fires are immense. Some 700 homes have been destroyed so far. Hope insurance might cover some of the property losses. The loss of human lives? Wild forests depend on bushfires for regeneration. However, wildlife in these forests do not. Therefore, they are dwindled. Bushfires are burning out of control, and people are evacuated. This is like Tsunami evacuation. If you are lucky to escape, when you return you don’t have a home to live. That is why it is like Tsunami. It is not like flood damage where people can salvage damaged homes. It is far more difficult to rebuild burnt out homes.

It manifests that aside evacuation, there is no emergency solution for this continuing disaster. In the longer-term, Australia will need to deploy robust planning measures to avoid recurrent destruction of homes and property. Bushfires may not be prevented in hot weather seasons especially with the forecast climate change.
 
Just had a look at Sentinel-2 imagery, tweaked to highlight fires and burn areas. Here, part of the Gosper's Mountain megafire on 31 December, where the fire front was many tens of km long.
GospersMFire.jpg
PS Cooler southerly wind gusting around here. Temperature has dropped over 12 degrees in the last 90 minutes; around 21C now. Was 45C this afternoon, whilst Western Sydney officially hit 48.9C.
 
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