Fires rage across Australia this Boxing Day as Bureau of Meteorology issues weather warnings

ABC NEWS (Australia)

As fires rage across Australia this Boxing Day, Senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, Dean Narramore, has more on the current weather warnings.

Transcript

00:00Extreme fire danger ratings are current for everywhere in Victoria except for East Gippsland.

00:08That does include the Grampians National Park where we do have that very large fire ongoing

00:12and the Melbourne metropolitan area.

00:14And that's because the combination of hot, dry and windy conditions is leading to these

00:19extreme fire dangers.

00:21What that means is if fires get going or already ongoing through Grampians National Park, that

00:26the weather conditions over the next 6 to 12 hours or possibly longer mean that any

00:30fire will be uncontrollable and uncontainable in these conditions.

00:34We also have a severe weather warning current for damaging winds for much of Western Victoria

00:39and once again that does include the Grampians National Park, with winds of 60 to 80 km an

00:44hour and we could see some gusting in excess of 90 km an hour.

00:48That's enough to bring down trees and power lines and also cause some property damage

00:52but also is going to cause major concerns for the fire around the Grampians.

00:55Yeah and the Grampians National Park, that bushfire has been burning for 10 days in a

01:00row now and so the emergency warnings are to leave immediately for residents in certain

01:05regions right?

01:06Yeah that's exactly right, you heard it earlier with the fires as well, it's a very dangerous

01:10situation around there and the weather is only going to get worse, the winds are only

01:13going to get stronger as we move into the latter morning and early afternoon.

01:18And in South Australia, let's move there now, where extreme fire conditions have been forecast,

01:24there's a total fire ban across several regions so hopefully no new fires start today hey?

01:32Yeah that's always the hope and we've seen a few showers but not thunderstorms yet but

01:36hopefully we don't see any more.

01:37As you heard earlier, that cold change, cold front is actually now moving through the Adelaide

01:41area and then it's going to move into eastern parts of South Australia as we move into the

01:46lunchtime, early afternoon time frame, then it's that change that will move into western

01:50Victoria as we move into the mid-afternoon and central Victoria into the late afternoon.

01:55But back into South Australia with those cool conditions, that cold front is going to bring

02:00those strong and gusty winds as well, so those fires that are occurring across northern Adelaide

02:05at the moment, we could see pretty big direction changes on those fires in the next hour or

02:10two, so please watch out for that.

02:12But much cooler conditions are likely this afternoon into this evening and as we go into

02:16Friday and the weekend, so thankfully once we get through today we should be good through

02:21South Australia for a while.

02:22So Dean we've heard a lot about fire danger in two states, what can we expect in the rest

02:27of the country?

02:28Yeah so we're zooming out across much of the country, pretty quiet conditions and high

02:33humidity keeping fire dangers pretty low through eastern parts of the country, though this

02:38change will move into New South Wales tomorrow so we're likely to see high to extreme fire

02:42dangers for much of northern and eastern New South Wales tomorrow, particularly northeast

02:47New South Wales so watch out for that.

02:50Temperatures are going to spike as well with temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s for

02:53inland areas, could even get into the low 40s for western Sydney.

02:58Queensland fire dangers are fine but western Queensland are looking at getting temperatures

03:01into the high 40s today so very hot through there.

03:04NT we're okay but back in WA we do have high fire dangers across much of northern and western

03:10WA today and tomorrow and then we could start seeing heat build over the weekend and extreme

03:15fire dangers likely much of the southwestern parts as we move into early next week so yeah

03:19a lot going on around the country.

03:21And I've got one final question for you, so this is a stressful time for a lot of people

03:25especially in Victoria and South Australia, they could be experiencing information overload

03:29from all this, so what do you think is the key information that they need to know?

03:35Yeah it's all about that timing of the change but also if you're near any of those fire

03:39zones or fire doesn't get going with you, it really comes down to getting that information

03:43from emergency services in terms of evacuates, emergency warnings etc so yeah really make

03:48sure you have the Vic Emergency App in Victoria or the SA Emergency App in South Australia

03:53and get any updates on that.

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