Total fire ban declared for the entirety of Victoria as temperatures are expected to soar

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Bushfires in Victoria are expected to continue, and a fire ban is in place as temperatures rise and winds gain speed

Transcript

00:00As we stand right now, that strong and gusty westerly change has moved through Mount Gambier,

00:07Narracourt, up towards Lamaroo, and it's just starting to cross the Victorian South Australia

00:12border as we speak.

00:14So it'll continue to move quickly eastwards.

00:16I think Portland's also just gone round to that strong and gusty westerly as well.

00:21So we're likely to see that start moving into western parts of Victoria in the coming hours.

00:25And as I've been talking about, probably approach the Grampians area as we get into that mid

00:29afternoon and possibly into the late afternoon hours, so within the next few hours as well.

00:34But ahead of that, these strong and gusty northerly winds are continuing to come down

00:38from the north.

00:39We've seen winds gusting to 70 kilometres an hour around Ballarat.

00:42We've also had some of our mountainous areas gust around 70 to 80 kilometres an hour.

00:46Over the fire zone area, still 50s and 60s, but we could see that pick up, and we will

00:50see that pick up in the coming hours as well.

00:53Temperatures also mostly in the mid to high 30s, a fair bit of cloud cover across much

00:58of western and southern parts of Victoria.

01:01That's keeping a lid on temperatures getting into the high 30s to low 40s, but it is still

01:05hot, it is still windy, and we've got that westerly change coming in the next few hours.

01:09Right now, those strong and gusty northerly winds, the fires are travelling to the south

01:13and spotting further south.

01:15But when that westerly change hits any ongoing fires, and particularly around the Big Fire

01:19and the Grampians, that means the winds are going to come from the west, so that means

01:23the fire will then very quickly travel from going south to then start moving eastwards.

01:27So if you're anywhere east of any of the fire zones right now, you could start becoming

01:32impacted as we move into the late afternoon and early evening hours, as that strong westerly

01:37change starts pushing the fire to the east rather than the south in the northerlies.

01:41And that's what we're most concerned, those few hours either side of the change, and that

01:45change could contain wind gusts in excess of 90 kilometres an hour as well.

01:49There's obviously, we've seen it stop recording, I think it's about 1 or 1.30 in the morning.

01:53We saw those temperatures in those last few obs go from around the low 20s into the mid-30s.

01:59Now from, I'm not fully across exactly what has happened, I think one of the NBN towers

02:04are providing power to that observation, might have gone down around that time, cannot confirm

02:09that of course.

02:10But there's obviously a lot of fire activity going on in and around that as well, so that

02:14possibly could be it as well.

02:16But no, we do look at many observations, that is one.

02:19We do have the portable weather stations that are located right across parts of the

02:23Grampians, as well as a huge observation network using radar, satellite and wind data.

02:28And we look at all of that to track the changes and also track the winds that are coming.

02:32We'll continue to keep updated on that, we've got a whole team focusing on it with our fire

02:35weather team, and we've got meteorologists embedded with our emergency services here

02:39in Victoria.

02:40We're still getting fresh and gusty west to south westerly winds there, so that's likely

02:44going to take a while to calm down later this afternoon and this evening.

02:47And that westerly change, as I mentioned earlier, has also moved through many of our

02:50western areas, sorry, eastern areas of South Australia, south of around the Renmark area,

02:56so those winds are going to stay up for the next few hours.

02:59So if any fires do get going in eastern parts of South Australia, that's going to be a concern

03:03because they will race towards the east with these strong and gusty westerly winds.

03:07So even though temperatures have cooled down, we're now seeing those really strong winds

03:10there and they're likely to continue until the mid and late afternoon timeframe.

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