Sunday, December 10, 2006

The fire this time

While I was fiddling around Western Australia, the bush fire season a parched Victoria has been dreading began, months early. A 100 km line of fire is feared, with flames in places reaching up 70 meters. It's like a crouching cat, said one firefighter, and when it decides to pounce nobody can stop it. The Vicar of St. Peter's said this is more than human power can resist: the fire will burn until it reaches the sea. (This picture was posted by a reader of the The Age.) Meanwhile, we had our hottest December day in 53 years today, the mercury reaching 42.1 degrees this afternoon (108 F), though it cooled nearly 20 degrees over the next hour. "Four seasons in one day" indeed! What we need is rain and lots of it, and that's the one thing nobody's predicting.