Untitled-in-sydney

Things are certainly warming up, but generally the temperatures in our part of Sydney (it's always warmer out west) have been typically in the 23-27c. That's sounds ok, but I reckon it should be in the mid 30's.

Elsewhere things seem to be toast and the weather maps seem to show almost every other major city (excluding Hobart) as warmer which just doesn't seem right. It could just be that I'm wrong.

The downside of the warmer weather and particularly so with the drought is bush fire, and this year is shaping up to be a doozy for victoria. Adverse weather conditions are forecast for this weekend. In case you're wondering what adverse represents, thing 39c and 40kph winds coupled with a direction change (so a lot of the back burning isn't immediately useful).

There are several fires raging (and that's no exageration) at the moment threatening several towns in alpine regions. The big fear is that with the wind change this weekend they'll merge into one. If this happens it will be the largest bush fire in about 70 years, with the front measuring around 100km in length.

Already an area of around 160,000 hectares has been burned - this equates to roughly 617 square miles (that's 25 miles on a side or about that distance from where I grew up to London), and if the fires merge this figure is thought that it may reach 600,000 hectares.

It's a long way away from here and the Blue Mountains have (or had) their own fires chewing through about 15,000 hectares. So far the closest fires were up on the Wakehurst Parkway, one of the major roads into this area and about 6kms away but these were dealt with quickly and were man made (over-zealous rubbish burning) rather than spontaneous like the ones caused by lightning strikes in the west.

The picture is kind of cool for two reasons. It shows just how far the smoke has travelled (the big lump at the bottom is Tassy) and demonstrates the air currents too. I guess those expensive satellites are useful after all?