Fire

Well anyone following this blog might think that we have fallen off the face of the earth since Black Saturday. Little did I know a few weeks ago that the day I posted the hot blog would be the start of the largest bush fire disaster in Australian history: 210 fatalities, 2498 farm buildings, 31 state infrastructure, 2029 houses, 10,287 livestock, 21,320 hectares of timber plantations and thousands of km of fencing with four of the largest fires still burning today. Two of the big fires are within national parks including the flagship Wilson's Prom Catherdral fire which has taken out over half the park so far. Both of the Canadian exchangees posted there have been busy working on backburns to protect Tidal River the main visitor site. Fortunately we haven't been directly impacted yet in the Grampians, touch wood, as most of the fires were in the south and eastern parts of Victoria so far this season. There was a lightning strike in the park that was quickly controlled and a predominately grassland fire near the town of Horsham around 70 km away which burned some houses and a golf course. Average rainfall for this area by this date is 85 mm and this year we have had a whooping 1.6 mm. The good news is that there is a 90% chance of several mm of rain forecast for this week. Hopefully it comes without much wind and lightning.

Yesterday we popped into Melbourne to send Dad off on the plane and take in the zoo. He certainly picked an interesting time to visit and we all have had a very authentic Australian summer experience this time around. At any rate we did manage to tour around a bit and now that work and life seem to be settling down a bit we can get around to a few more blog updates, no no, stop laughing, we really mean it this time :-).

Blow me down hot

Hot, hot, hot!

Someone can turn down the thermostat here anytime they like. Here are the current conditions courtesy of weatherzone.com.au and as you can see it is just a touch warm. Today is the hottest temperature we have ever experienced in our lives and combined with the strong winds and single digit humidity tensions are running very high. The last time conditions were like this was during the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983. The fire danger index is supposed to clear 110 today on a scale where 50 is considered extreme. People are being asked to stay home and not go into the bush at all and many parks in Victoria have been closed to the public for the day.

This is on the second week of warm temperatures which have had a record 6 days over 40 degrees when the average for this area is one or two days over 40 a year. Dad picked a good time to come over and experience some heat. So far he hasn't been suffering too bad, staying in range of air conditioning in the hottest part of the day and at least with the low humidity the temperature has been cooling to comfortable temperatures at night.

A cool change is scheduled to come through this afternoon and drop the temperatures up to 20 degrees with cool south ocean winds, and hopefully it does so without thunderstorms or major damaging winds. While Australians can't fathom a storm day in Canada where snow and ice close down everything, most Canadians who melt in 30 degree weather would have a difficult time comprehending the experience of hot devastating weather. With extreme weather becoming more common globally perhaps it won't be long until we all are forced to adapt.

On the plus side we are spending a lot of time at the wonderful Halls Gap swimming pool and Aiden has become a fish. Victoria has also learned the importance of information on days like today and have an impressive website where you can see what is going on with fire around the state.