andrewlighten.com

Fire map here [pdf]. Be sure to read the scale in the lower left corner.

Edit: Kilmore fire map here [pdf]. At least it can’t get too much further east. The Yea fire’s burnt area will be a pretty effective firebreak.

As late as 23:30 tonight the CFA are still issuing urgent threat messages:

The Murrindindi Mill fire continues to burn in a north easterly direction. The communities of Taggerty, Acheron, Thornton, Rubicon, Snobs Creek, Eildon, Alexandra and Molesworth can expect thick smoke and ember attack. All residents in these areas are advised to activate their fire plans immediately and to remain on high alert.

An update on the Marysville township:

We understand that everyone is safe in Marysville and are assembled at Gallipoli Park. There are reports that a number of houses have been burnt, so stay tuned to ABC radio as further details come to hand.

I know this area so well! I have spent a lot of time around the north east of the state: Taggerty, Thorton, Buxton, Narbethong, Marysville and Alexandra. I know the area really well. To hear that a fire that started in Murrundindi has jumped across into the Rubicon Valley and destroyed houses is Marysville is staggering. That’s a fair way.

It’s been a while since I’ve been up that way, but I can picture exactly where Gallipoli Park is, so I can see the town and know where all the residents are standing.

It’s clear that even with the assistance of the cool change that has come through these fires will burn for another day or two at least. The CFA have already declared tomorrow a Total Fire Ban day; that page came through the SES around 10pm.

(Marysville Photo Credit: alistair_35@flickr).

The second wave of the cool change has come through, bringing with it a few drops of rain.

It’s not even enough to settle the dust yet, but at least it’s something.

The wind has dropped to almost nothing as well, which is a blessing.

Earlier today the wind was averaging 50-60km/hr with gusts up to 90km/hr at those record temperatures I mentioned. It was that searingly hot northerly wind, combined with 6% humidity (typical hot dry summer wind) that posed such a bushfire danger.

Further east, in the worst of the fires, the wind is still blowing hard. As this second light change drifts across the state the fire fronts will slow and the CFA will be much better placed to attack. It’s not there yet though; as you can see from this updated radar image the majority of the smoke from the fires is still being driven by a strong, hot north-westerly.

The left-hand side of that smoke plume is the Kilmore fires (as noted on the map). The right-hand side is a combination of the Murrundindi and Bunyip fires.

This is the current weather bureau radar image. It covers a large chunk of central Victoria. (We’re in the upper left corner, just west of Castlemaine.)

That blue overlay would usually indicate where the rain is. Thing is, there’s no rain in Victoria today.

Today, that blue represents smoke. It’s dense enough the radar is detecting it as rain.

The list of current fire incidents on the CFA website is getting longer and longer. I count somewhere over 550.

Fires are currently well out of control in Bunyip (east of Melbourne), Kilmore (north), Coleraine (south west), Murrundindi (north-east), Churchill (south east) and many other places.

It reached 47.9 degrees at Avalon today; that’s 118 on the old scale. Certainly the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in Victoria by a long way — the old record was 114.

That previous record was set on Black Friday — January 13, 1939. Easily the worst bushfires in Australian history, and according to the wikipedia article, one of the worst fire events anywhere in the world. There were 71 fatalities that day. Almost 5 million acres of land was burnt. Several towns were completely destroyed. 3,700 buildings were lost.

All the news reports say that today’s fire danger exceeds that day 70 years ago. If we get away as easily as we have so far we’ll be lucky.

We’re certainly better prepared to fight fires today compared to then (Elvis, anyone?) but days like this nature has the upper hand. There’s already been a lot of property loss today; I just hope there’s no loss of life. I know one firefighter has already been badly injured; my thoughts are with his family for a full recovery. This is a bad day for bushfires though, and we’ll be pretty lucky to get through without loss of life.

A cool change has thankfully come through the western half of the state, but for the CFA that just means the temperature drops and the wind changes direction. There’s no rain in this change at all, so it doesn’t help much when you’re facing 20km long fire fronts.

My iPod touch has completely dropped the ball and lost everything that was on it. The contents of the iPod has become a big opaque blob of something:

You can’t actually identify what this “other” stuff is so you can delete it and resync music and videos, etc. I happen to know that big blog is all the music and videos I had on there (the space consumed would be about right) but because the device has completely lost the plot all you can do is restore to factory settings and start again.

For the second time.

The first time this happened I figured it was just some kind of freak occurrence, but this is the second time it’s done this. If it happens a third time it will go back to the Apple shop.

(Oh, and for the record, yes, it has the latest software. I did that nice little 277MB download a week or two ago, so it’s running 2.2.1. And it’s been running fine since then, until it dropped the ball again this morning. It’s now happened with both the 2.2 and 2.2.1 versions of software.)