Chris Preston wrote: ↑Fri Dec 20, 2019 7:12 am
It has been an interesting day. It just touched 47 C here this afternoon (minimum overnight was 34, which occurred just before 5 a.m.). Not a record. There is plenty of smoke around. There is a large fire about 15 km to the E, another 20 km to the NW, a third 10 km north of that and one 30 km to the west. Wind change has just come in, but it is still 39 C. Currently 33 km/hr, but tipped to increase in strength as the change moves through. Good thing is relative humidity has increased to 17%. It has been as low as 10%.
Going to be another night of keeping everything tight, this time to keep the smoke, rather than the heat out.
*Waves* Hi ChrisP! Such lovely weather you've turned on for my visit. From memory, you're in the suburbs and safe, apart from the smoke.
For those of you not glued to local news, the South Australian fires have put four firies in hospital with burns and smoke inhalation, and someone died when they crashed their car while trying to escape. People opened their property gates to let animals run away so all the traffic had to move slowly to dodge panicked cows and horses. As Chris says, the cool change should make things much better tomorrow, so long as the expected overnight lightning doesn't set too many new fires.
The NSW fires have destroyed at least 800 buildings, two firies died when their truck rolled, and a few more got badly burned. And there is no way to travel between Sydney and the west of the state. NSW is expecting temperatures in the mid-30s, so things will be bad there again.
What a pity there's nothing the Australian government can do reduce the severity of future fires or to better resource the volunteers who love doing this.