Saturday dawned ominously here in Sydney, with catastrophic fire conditions officially declared, temperatures forecast as high as 47°C, and fires approaching population centres on the outskirts of the city. I spent much of the day monitoring news, in between starting work on a new Proof that the Earth is a Globe (not ready to post yet). Fortunately, things didn’t go nearly as badly as feared. Temperatures barely broke 40°C across Sydney (possibly because heavy smoke kept some sun out). A few homes were destroyed in the town of Lithgow, and as I type this one man is missing – hopefully he’ll be found alive. The three highways west and south of Sydney were all closed due to fire today – at one point there were only two viable routes to travel out of or into Sydney – but these have been reopened this evening. Things could easily have been so much worse.
The weather forecast for the next few days is a lot cooler, slowly building up to hot again after Christmas. Hopefully the firefighters can take advantage and limit any further danger to populated areas.
New content today:
In the States, some of these uncontrollable wildfires are the result of years of overly-conservative forest management. Preventing natural fires allows more unburned deadwood to accumulate, leading to worse fires down the road.
Do you know if something like that is a factor in Australia?
It may be a small factor, but not to the extent it is in California. It’s recognised here that Australian forests rely on fire for healthy growth – in fact many plants cannot germinate and reproduce until after they have been burnt. So fires are often left to burn in areas where they don’t directly threaten population centres.
The main cause of the current crisis is 10 years of drought, leading to very dry conditions, an overload of dry wood compared to wet, and increasing temperatures and storm activity (leading to lightning strikes).