How hot is it where you are, and are fires burning near you? Today has been the hottest day ever in Hobart. There are large fires burning in Tasmania, The worse in the Dunnalley area where houses have been lost. No deaths or injuries reported. The Arthur Highway is closed so no-one can get out of the Tasman Peninsula. If people from the Peninsula want to evacuate they have to travel further south down the Peninsula to a refuge at Nubeena. I am not sure what is happening to any tourists visiting Port Arthur. There are three other refuges that have been set up in Southern Tasmania (one at New Norfolk, one at Sorell, and I am not sure where the other is.
I don't have air-conditioning either. My house is very hot and I won't be able to go outside when it cools because their is too much smoke around. There has been several different temperatures given for max in Hobart today - 40.9, 41.3, 41.8 and 42 - so I am not sure which one is correct I did here that just before the fire front went through at Dunalley a temperature of 54C was recorded. Usually weather station don't survive fires going through so they are saying that this is an important reading as it shows the temperatures that fire fighters have to work in.
The worst I've had is 47C a few years back, over 116F. Just moving your bare arm through the air made it feel like it was on fire. It makes these 40 degree days kind of normal. We usually have between 40 and 42 at some point in the summer. My house takes a long time to warm up, it's about even with the outside now. Cool change is coming after 9pm. I don't mind the whole steamy effect, I usually enjoy it as long as there are no fires. I've never had air conditioning anywhere I've lived.
The hottest temperature I have ever experience was 45 degrees at Coolgardie many years ago. That was a much drier heat and more bearable than 40 degrees in Hobart. My house heats up very quickly because it has so many large windows. Boats have left Hobart heading to Nubeena to evacuate about 200 people who are stranded there. It seems that most of them are tourists who were visiting Port Arthur. Another large fire is burning at Bicheno.
Experienced days of 45c. Not fun. Today was hot. Had a fan going at mum's place. Now i'm in the city, and seems cooler, but i'm in the a/c of melb central - until I head to dinner later. Was rather lazy earlier, and caught a bus instead walking to the train station. I heard about some fires in rural parts of Victoria.
I'm just waiting for the trains to collapse. I'll be in the city every day for a week starting tomorrow and if I end up on replacement buses I will cry. Why the tracks buckle in 42 degree heat when they have trains going from Adelaide to Darwin with the rails getting to 50 I do not understand. Miss Chicken I see a school has burned down in Tassie.
They are saying that a school, a petrol station and houses have been lost at Dunalley and houses at Copping. It is all bit sketchy and I don't think anything has been confirmed.
Melbourne was always a dry heat but for the last 5+ years it's been often very humid when at the hottest. I've gone from hating that to enjoying it, kind of cools you off walking around with damp skin.
I had trouble reading that. I've lost people I've known in the last bad bushfires. I hope everyone gets out safely.
Sorry to hear about your loss. I am a bit concerned about the bushfire at Bicheno as I have a friend up there. However I know she is sensible enough to know what to do. She is north of Bicheno and the fires are south of the town
and the third big fire which is in the Central Highlands. A cool charge is expected around midnight (about 5 hours away).
^ I'm hoping it arrives sooner and that in the meantime, things will be controlled as soon as possible. After a couple of pleasantly mild summers we seem to have reverted to ugliness here. Very ordinary today - peaked around 35 degrees and worse, it was windy for most of the day. A fire around 20-25 minutes' drive from here is apparently under control. Any fire anywhere is not something I ever want to hear about, though. Too many tragedies, too many mistakes repeated and lessons not learned from those tragedies. As ever at this time of year I worry about some halfwit tourist throwing a cigarette butt out a car window, or deciding they want to have a barbeque in the "bush", or something equally imbecilic. Not to mention scum-of-the-earth arsonists. Summer sucks. I can't wait for it to be over.
The fire in the Central Highlands is believe to have started from a campfire. 65 buildings are now believed to have destroyed in Dunalley and Boomer Bay. 50 people are waiting on the beach at Boomer Bay ready to be evacuated. They are not in any danger. There is one unconfirmed death in Dunalley. The fire is starting to travel down the Tasman Peninsula. There are 600 people in the refuge at Nubeena.
8:15pm and still 40C. But there's a breeze. I'm going to sit on the porch, drink a cider I stashed in the freezer and read the Firefly comics I got as a belated Christmas present.
How very scary! As an outsider it's hard to get a perspective - are any of you folks here on the board close to these fires? I hope not, and I hope that everyone is able to stay safe. What a terrible situation.