The weather has been on everyone's minds here at the moment because, in some areas, we are experiencing the hottest summer for 120 years. If you thought the British were obsessed with talking about the weather you should come and hear the Australians!
Unlike the British however, Australians are expected to be experts. There are no helpful little clouds, suns and lightning bolts on our weather forecasts to aid our understanding. We are expected to know all about el nino and are battered with meteorological terms like trops, lows, highs and radar maps which look very pretty but are tricky to decipher without some formal training.
Conversations in the supermarket or petrol station all start with references to the heat/cold/rain and everyone has an opinion on what is going to happen next. 'There is a cool change coming' - 'I can feel a storm approaching'. In spite of all this expertise, the whole country is taken completely by surprise by sudden weather events on a surprisingly regular basis! 

To be fair, we do have some big weather here. No drizzle or light breezes for us, if there is wind or rain, it is proper wind or rain. At the moment inland areas of New South Wales are struggling along in over 40 degree temperatures while, in the Northern Territory, some communities are cut off by flooding.

 The series of incredibly hot days was expected to come to a head on Sunday with the biggest worry being fire. Fire is in the back of the minds of all Australians in the summer months and every town has designated safe areas which are usually big open spaces away from trees and buildings. There are other concerns too when it is this hot it is important to keep hydrated and to do as little as possible. Our local swimming pool sent text messages and put up facebook posts saying they would stay open until 8pm each evening until the heatwave ended but most people choose to stay indoors with the air conditioning on full blast. This then places huge pressure on the power supply and, if there is a fire, power is needed to work water pumps because the water pressure drops as soon as every household switches on their hoses at once. A dilemma, I am sure you will agree. The New South Wales government dealt with this by ordering that Tomago Aluminium switched off their smelter during the hottest hours for 3 consecutive days. The smelter uses a staggering 10% of NSW power! 

 The fire danger, which usually hovers around moderate to high at this time of year, was predicted to be catastrophic in our area (Hunter on the map). Everyone in the areas expected to be affected received a series of text messages telling us to be ready to take action or evacuate, we were also called on our landlines. Although this was obviously a helpful strategy in many ways, it threw some elderly people living alone into a panic thinking they had to evacuate straight away. Added to this the NSW fire chief appeared on the news on Saturday night with a very scary speech about how Sunday was expected to bring the most catasrophic conditions seen in living memory, which did leave us thinking we were all going to die! 
I am in two minds about the warnings because most fires are started deliberately and I think it gives people ideas, indeed two men have already been arrested this weekend for setting fires on purpose, they were 32 and 40 years old - not kids! However, the reason for all the warnings was, added to the extreme heat, there were very strong winds due to arrive in the late afternoon which is the worst possible combination for the firefighters.
Unfortunately the predictions came true with 97 fires burning at one point across the state. The little township of Uarby was almost completely destroyed. At one point the firefighters were battling in 47 degree heat against 90km per hour winds and 75% of the houses along with much of the livestock were lost. 

There were no fires near us this time although we could smell one which was about 40km away, but we were again reminded how brave our firefighters are. They are almost all volunteers and it is thanks to them that, yet again, no human lives were lost. I'll leave you with some pix of our local firies with the cakes a couple of little boys made for them.