Cos I sure as hell envy yours!
I reckon you can always add another layer when it is cold but there is a legal - and aesthetic - limit to what one can remove when it is hot.
It was 45* here on Monday, and then didn't go below 34* overnight. (That is about 110*F and 94*F). Actually, 34* seemed so cool by comparison that I slept quite well...!
There were Country Fire Authority warnings of Catastrophic Fire Days, telling people to leave early if they didn't have a fire plan or if their homes were not defendable. And this house is still full of gaps, and would be impossible to save if there was a fire and ember attack.
On Black Saturday, February 7 when 173 people were killed and a thousand homes burned, I was here with my overalls and boots all ready, and metal buckets and mops and the bath filled with water.
I now realise that if there had been a fire I would be dead.
This is a map (thank you Wikipedia) of bushfires in
Victoria this decade.The green area is the fires of 2003 when my brother and sister in law at Mitta Mitta had fire around them for two weeks, burning right to their garden fence.
The blue area is '06-'07 when all the High Country burned. The Alpine Fires were the biggest fires in Victoria's history, and burnt for 2 months.
This is a satellite photo of the enormous drift of smoke.And this is what it looked like from the ground at Tarrawingee in the North East.
Red is Black Saturday. There is a scary big gap between Ballarat and the little red blobs of Black Saturday at Bendigo. Which is where I am. And that is also mostly bush - lots of State Forest, and Crown Land, and just lovely bush blocks (like mine) all tinder dry (like mine).
I hope this isn't where the next big fires are. Sometimes ice and snow and freezing cold looks like SUCH a great alternative!
I actually left here at the weekend and went south to The Sweetheart's. He has air conditioning and that made life bearable.
Came back here last night in a light drizzling rain, and a 20* drop in temperature. The garden is all crispy and frizzled. But it would have been like this if I had stayed so I don't feel too guilty. The tomatoes are still battling along, hooray!
OzJane has summed up most succinctly the weather of the last couple of days. Check out what she had to say.
2 comments:
Scrary. Very scray. Mum said she'd heard on the radio that it was over 100° in Melbourne and that people were sleeping on the beach and I thought of you.
At long last the snow has melted and there is the vague possibility of sun today.
I couldn't bear to think of what would have happened to you, Jas! Terrifying, all of those fires. I hope you have plans in place to flee at first opportunity if fires come your way again. My girlfriend in QLD says it is very hot, very humid, but no rain there either. You all are in the frying pain of the world now.
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