Bush fire fallout

Three weeks ago I shared a map that showed all of the fires burning across the state of New South Wales. Unbelievably the latest map is even worse as a ring of fires is now burning around the entire Sydney region.  Compare the latest map with the one I published last month. The coastline shown stretches almost 1000km from the southern outskirts of Brisbane to Sydney's northern suburbs.

Yesterday the Rural Fire Service (RFS) said there are 120 bush and grass fires burning in NSW, 50 of which are yet to be contained. More than 2 million hectares of land has now been ravaged by fire (that's 5 million acres for the imperial measurement folks) - and we're only four days into Summer.

For four days now the heavy smoke haze has left us feeling like we’re live in the twilight zone. Every day the sky takes on a surreal orange hue. It gives everything a freaky amber glow while casting ominous orange shadows. Then, in the final hours before sunset, the sun slowly turns a bizarrely vivid pink. Sydney's skyline increasingly resembles the notoriously drab and gritty conditions I've always associated with Delhi and Beijing.

We’ve also been waking to the bizarre sight of thermal inversion layers across the Sydney skyline. The horizon has dirty smoke haze bands appearing at ground level and high altitude; which are then separated by a band of clear blue sky.

Last night these layers were enhanced by swirling fringes of grey ash clouds. The cloud then settled overnight and we woke this morning to find black ash and ghostly grey grit covering every external surface.  The paving image below is the same area shown in the orange shadow image above. These images were taken three days apart.

UPDATE: 1:00pm.  6 December
This afternoon a combination of dry conditions and difficult terrain has resulted in several large fires joining together north of Sydney.

The Rural Fire Service said the Gospers Mountain fire, which has burnt more than 250,000 hectares, has merged with the Little L Complex fire near Singleton and the Three Mile fire at the Central Coast.  The merged fire is now up to 200,000 hectares wide, large enough to engulf the entire city of Sydney, from the coast to the Blue Mountains.

Furthermore, without an extremely strong westerly change, Sydney could be blanketed in smoke for weeks or months as fires continue raging to the north, east and south of the city. At 1:00pm today more than 40 fires state-wide are still burning out of control (i.e. classified as not contained).

UPDATE: 10 February
As of 14 January 2020, fires this season have burnt an estimated 18.6 million hectares (46 million acres; 186,000 square kms), destroyed over 5,900 buildings (including 2,779 homes) and killed at least 34 people. An estimated one billion animals have been killed and some endangered species may be driven to extinction.