SYDNEY: Certain regions of Western Australia were gripped on Saturday (today) by an “extreme” heat-wave, increasing the risk of bush fires in the vast state, the country’s weather forecaster stated.
The Bureau of Meteorology had issued an “extreme heatwave warning” for the remote Pilbara and Gascoyne areas of Australia’s largest state on Saturday, cautioning that temperatures in those regions could reach the high forties degrees Celsius over the weekend.
In the Pilbara mining town of Paraburdoo, situated approximately 1,500 km (932 miles) north of the state capital Perth, the forecast predicted a maximum temperature of 47 degrees Celsius (116.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday—surpassing the average January maximum by more than six degrees, according to data from forecasters. As of 7:30 a.m., the temperature had already reached 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
This scorching weather elevates the risk of bushfires during an already precarious fire season, intensified by an El Nino weather event known for triggering extreme phenomena such as wildfires, cyclones, and droughts.
After facing an uncontrollable bushfire near Perth earlier this month, with firefighters battling the blaze amid high temperatures, evacuations were prompted. The cautionary alert follows two relatively mild fire seasons in Australia compared to the devastating “Black Summer” of 2019-2020, where bushfires ravaged an area equivalent to the size of Turkey, resulting in the loss of 33 lives, 3 billion animals, and trillions of invertebrates.
