– Australia Is Hotter Than It’s Been In 100 Years (Business Insider/AFP, Jan 14, 2014):
Australian authorities warned Tuesday of some of the worst fire danger since a 2009 inferno which killed 173 people, with most of the continent’s southeast sweltering through a major heatwave.
Victoria state, where the so-called Black Saturday firestorm flattened entire villages in 2009 and destroyed more than 2,000 homes, was again bracing for extreme fire weather.
“These next four days promise to be amongst the most significant that we have faced in Victoria since Black Saturday,” said acting state premier Peter Ryan.
Tens of thousands of firefighters were on standby, and 1,290 brigades were in a “state of high preparedness”, he added, with the peak danger day expected on Friday when very strong winds are forecast.
Two separate grass-fires tested crews early at Little River, west of Melbourne, and Kangaroo Ground to the east.
The flames raced out of control and triggered brief emergency alerts before water-bombing aircraft and engine teams managed to bring them under control.
There were also blazes alight in neighbouring South Australia state.
Victoria and South Australia are preparing this week for what forecasters are describing as “severe to extreme heatwave conditions”, with successive days of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) expected.
A similar heatwave struck before the 2009 fires, Australia’s worst natural disaster of the modern era in terms of casualties. An estimated 374 people died during the preceding heatwave, with another 173 fatalities in the firestorm itself.
If the forecasts come to pass, Melbourne will endure its longest stretch of hot weather in 100 years.
Road tar was melting in southern Tasmania, with temperatures in the island state some 18 degrees above the January average, breaking several records.
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There is a real problem. However, it is summer in Australia, they are in the southern hemisphere. Putting that aside, they have been undergoing a dreadful drought for years.
One of the leading climate experts……I forget her name……has moved her family to Australia to avoid the radioactivity……it won’t work, but she moved anyway. The earth spins, and the poisons are already around the entire world.
I feel bad for the good folks of Australia. I sure hope governments will see the damage done in Japan due to corporate control, and realize it has to be stopped. Corporations are truly an evil man made entity as Abe Lincoln said…….their greed is destroying our lives and planet. All of this for what? Enrich a few greedy guts even more?
This is a time of great upheaval and change, most people don’t realize yet what Fukushima is doing to our world. Even the greedy guts are going to die from it. It is a nasty way to die, radiation is invisible, nobody can hide from it.