Australians - natural disasters

Yes thinking of you all across the ditch, we're sweltering here today and tomorrow will be even hotter.
Take care ,
tess

I had to attend a birthday today and a friend at the party said there car registered 48deg cel or 118 F on the way down on the car temp gauge. Believe it or not I think i'm used to the heat now...of course I don't have to be out in the sun and do sympathise with anyone that does.

I saw this news this morning. Keeping all you Aussies in my prayers, must be terrible.

Hugs,
Gail *Nanners*

Please take care of yourselves everyone!!! Such dangerous heat!!! Any predictions for when the heat wave may break???

Sno, our state is undergoing one of its biggest fire emergencies ever. 25 confirmed dead so far, and this is first thing in the morning, before officials can go in and survey the damage. They're expecting the toll to reach the 40s very quickly... and the morgues are already full because so many people died in the heat, before the fires started.

In a nutshell, we've had no rain for ages, *then* we had our worst heat wave on record, *then* we had our hottest day ever (46C+), and *then* we were hit with gale-force hot northerly winds. The country is so dry; it has just burst into flames and the wind pushed the fires faster than anyone could run, let alone fight, them.

The fires are pretty close to a couple of my good friends, but, though evacuated, they are ok so far.

If you choose to click on the link above, Sno, you might like to click on the link to Peter Mitchell's description of his town burning. It's one of those harrowing radio interviews I'll never forget.

Stay cool, Jo.

Ivy.

Wishing the best to you all and stay safe.lol gail

Glad to hear you are safe Ivy, the losses of these poor people is awful :(
Jo - whose is not going to whinge about the heat today as there are people worse of than me!

Strikes me that this sounds like one of those days where saying, "Well, living like this beats h**l out of the alternative" is the closest to humour you're going to get !
Can you tell me how close to Melbourne the fires are ? The Google map I was looking at didn't have a scale, so I am wondering how far away from my friend's house there Kinglake was....
God, this is awful news to have to watch !

Ivy, Jo, Tess and anybody out there suffering this awful weather. My thoughts are with you all. I have a niece over there with
you guys. I'm sure my sister in the UK (her mum) is driving herself crazy with worry....

Stay safe xxx

tonight while watching tv, a rather odd commercial came on that my wife and i sat watching wondering what it was about......because it looked like a movie trailer, and as soon as somebody said something about needing a walkabout, i knew where it was going. it was a tourism commercial for australia......................i thought about you guys and what you are experiencing there. 40 years ago, flying from darwin to sydney in the predawn darkness (sydney wouldn't allow flights before 8:00am), i got to see firsthand what fires in the outback was all about.......and that was during normalcy. i can only imagine what things must be like now. i wish you guys could send some of that heat here to melt all the snow. are things any better in the northern regions around darwin? i know that is actually going closer to the equator, but weather paterns do strange things. i'll reiterate sno's question, 'is it bad down around melbourne'? they would seemingly be much cooler, but, again, weather does strange things at times.

stay safe, Aussies! have a couple o' schooners for me, and may the weather break tomorrow.

vv

ps. vv, it's not cooler in Melbourne. It was 46C there yesterday.

Hope u are all safe, was just watching the news and it broke my heart to see how many peoples lives are turned upside down because of some horrible people out there that started those fires. They should be shot, to think of not only the people that have lost their homes, their lives, pets etc and all of our beautiful wildlife that just didnt stand a chance. It just makes me cry. I live in the north but not quite far enough to be affected by the floods thankfully but they also are destroying so many lives here in Australia. Sad right now, I wish I was healthy enough to volunteer to help them out. My son in law is with the SES (State Emergency Service) and may be heading north or south to help out. Take care all and stay safe