A bush fire season to end them all

Australia's record-breaking bush fire season continues unabated. Record after record continues to fall including the largest fire ever witnessed from a single ignition source in Australia.

This satellite image published by NSW Rural Fire Service on 1 January says it all really.  Smoke from the NSW bush fires completely covered New Zealand's South Island for several days.  It's a striking testament to the amount of vegetation that ultimately burned in the final days of 2019. Some of the smoke and ask rising from the fire's extraordinary pyro-convective thunderstorms has even reached the troposphere.

Our light home from Tasmania on 4 January passed over the massive Currowan fire. This blaze is burning out of control south of Sydney. It covers more than 264,000 hectares. Overnight the fire moved into the iconic Kangaroo Valley area.

As you can see from this image several bush fires are now so large they’re generating their own weather system including large cumulus thunderstorm clouds. This image was taken about 4000m and shows just one fire front covering almost 40kms.

How much of Australia’s East Coast has burned as of 14 January? This map in the New York Times says it all. It shows Brisbane in dark grey at the top, then Sydney midway down the coast before ending with Melbourne in the south. When you look at it remember that the distance between Brisbane and Melbourne is approx 2000km.

The areas shown in red have burned in the last 2 days, dark orange in the last 7 days and light orange since October 2019.  The nation hasn't seen anything on this scale in more than 30 years. When will it end? Bush fire season typically winds down in March (so we have another two months to go).