[SEL] Fires in Vic (Oz) today...

[Paul Pavlinovich]

If you take a look at my outside webcam today
http://cgi.steamengine.com.au/emeraldcam/index.html
then you will see a haze in the background. For a change this isn't an 
artefact of using a cheap webcam instead of a quality outdoor camera. 
This is the smoke from the bushfires about 1 hour north east of us.

The State Premier (equivalent of a State Governor in US terms) enacted 
the first stage of the state emergency plan yesterday when he announced 
the existing fires are expected to join into a single fire front in the 
expected weather conditions today 37C (100F) with a strong dry Northerly 
wind. Some of them already have overnight. Last time a fire of this 
magnitude with these weather conditions occurred it burnt 1/3rd of the 
land area of the state of Victoria (as well as South Australia and NSW). 
This event is predicted to burn as much as 1/5th of the land area.

For those who are interested, you can see the fire lists and fire maps at
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenfoe.nsf/Home+Page/DSE+Fire~Home+Page?open
and
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/incidents/incident_summary.htm
Don't go crazy updating these pages though - people depend on them to 
get enough information to activate their fire plans and sometimes they 
do get congested on big incident days.

Our weather bureau have in their forecast "A Fire Weather warning is 
current for the Central district which includes all of Melbourne for 
Saturday.".

The next few days won't be much better, with expected temperatures in 
Melbourne of 35 with a late thunderstorm - and guess what lightning 
strikes do in tinder dry bushland. In the NorthEast district where most 
of the fires currently are, they're expecting the next few days of 40C 
(104C), 41C (105F), 31C (88F), 28C (82F).

For a bit of background info, Australia is generally fairly dry, but we 
are in the 12th year of the worst drought on record. We are turning 
towards desalination and recycling of waste water for our ongoing water 
needs - something normally only experienced in highly over populated or 
desert countries.

Wish us luck people...

Regards
Paul

-- 

email: pjp at steamengine.com.au
skype: steamenginepaul
Emerald, Victoria, Australia
www.steamengine.com.au