Fires in NSW Australia

Hi Everyone,

As I am sure that by now you have heard that NSW is facing a very bad bush fire season this year.
What I do know is that the news hasn't exactly shown what the worst day was actually like.
These videos and photos were taken by me on the 5th of December 2019 at around 2:30pm-4:30pm in the afternoon.

The 3 videos are taken from the train on my way home from work (I had been to the Doctor due to not feeling the best and was told that multiple health issues had gotten the better of me, but I am much better now). These videos and photos are not edited of filtered in any way.
Needless to say, when I left work things didn't look like this....

The first video is of the run down to the Como rail bridge, looking out to the landmass in the middle of the Georges river...



The second video is the run from Jannali to Sutherland...



The third is the run from Sutherland to Kirrawee. It looks like an old sepia toned video, that's how bad the smoke was...



After jumping off the train, I looked back and just had to take this photo....



It looked like the apocalypse had begun, especially when you look at the sun in the sky...



Less than 40 minutes later looking out into my backyard...



And the sky without the sun in it...



For some weird reason, as the fires are burning all around the Sydney area the smoke tends to gather over the Sutherland shire in the afternoons.
This has been confirmed by multiple sources, and no one can figure out why...

Fortunately, things have been improving lately and we haven't had a day as bad as this again.
But our thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones or their properties during these fires.

Regards,
Justin

Hi Justin.

Thanks for the videos and pictures, we have been following it on the news over here, it's hard to comprehend fires so big that they affect a whole state.

I feel for all those who are affected by this.

Hi Mark,

Fortunately it isn't quite the whole state, but there are around 130 odd separate bush fires on going at the moment.
And the fires aren't just limited to NSW, a few of the other states are suffering as well.

The biggest is up the Blue Mountains where from memory 5 or so fires have merged in to a "super fire"as they are calling it.

The Government has listed the conditions as "catastrophic" and air pollution had been rated as 200 times higher than "extreme" (though it is a lot clearer lately). A lot of people have started using masks to filter out the smoke particles. I got one myself, it is a proper painters air filter mask, I got it the same day as I took the videos and pictures and I have had to use it a couple of times since.

It doesn't help that we are in the middle of a severe drought, Sydney itself is currently on level 2 water restrictions (no use of hoses on gardens, no washing of cars except by bucket or "grey water", limit shower lengths) and we may go to level 3 early in the new year (something about limiting tap drinking water and other restrictions). Other parts of NSW are on level 8 restrictions...
On Tuesday the 24th of December we had the first bit of rain in over a month. Enough to wet an ant, but no where near enough to make a great difference in the overall situations.

Oh well, that's what we get for living on the hottest, driest, flattest continent in the world...
Some people think that Africa takes that title, but if you compare overall figures, Australia takes those honors, apparently there are places in Australia that haven't seen decent rain since before I was born in 1985....

Justin

Thanks for sharing these images, and yes it does help to show what you're all having to suffer with. Please take care of yourself and your family.

Thank you Alec,

I hope that you and your family are also safe and well!

Regards,
Justin

Hi Guys,

Just thought you might like to see this:

NSW Fires Live Update

A quick summary:

Sydney Morning Herald wrote:

• More than 140 fires are still burning across the state, including three at "watch and act" level. 1365 homes have been lost, while 3.6 million hectares [13,900 square miles] have been burnt this fire season.
  
  
• There have been eight deaths since Monday.
  
  
• An area stretching hundreds of kilometres from Nowra to the Victorian border and west to Kosciuszko has been declared "leave zones".
  
  

For a size comparison, the size of the area that has been burnt is almost 1:3.6 (just over a quarter) of England's (not the UK's) land mass. The math's for that being England is 50,346 square miles approx, vs 13,900 approx that has been burnt so far in NSW ALONE I have not included the other states which have also been hit by bush fires.

To be honest, I don't exactly know how to respond to this but somewhat laugh:

Australian Fires smoke hits New Zeland

Basically, the smoke from the Aussie fires has drifted 1200 miles and is now blanketing New Zealand.
I mean...

I mean at least you can see it from space now!? Um, Yay?

Satellite Images

Regards,
Justin

Glad to see you still posting Justin, it means you are OK

Seen some more footage on the news here, it looks like Armageddon.

Hi Mark,

I live in a sort of safe-ish area in suburban Sydney, but it is only about 1km to the Royal Nation Park which is usually one of the first areas to catch fire.
Fortunately I live on the North side of a major road which does mean we have at least a 10 meter wide fire break in front of our house, but fires have jumped greater distances.

On a sarcastic note, congratulations to the suburb of Penrith for being the hottest place on earth yesterday!
Penrith hits 48.9

Well, what a difference a few days can make!

For the last few days we have been getting rain in Sydney, but today it decided to hail, twice!  
Mind you, it's still about 27 degrees outside so the hail melted within a hour but it was quite intimidating:
(Apologies in advance for the video quality as it was filmed through fly screen)

Front yard, with my car fully exposed to the elements:

The solid metal thumps that you can hear in the video are the larger chunks of hail hitting the roof of my car and bouncing off.

In the backyard:

How fast visibility went. Also watch the rain jumping the gutters on the shed!

Back to the front yard:

You can't quite see it, but the gutter lane for the road has flooded...

The back yard after the second storm:


The front yard:


The ice near the front door:


More ice piles:


Some of the chunks of ice that hit my car:


From the back yard:


The only damage? The passenger side mirror on my car. The whole thing came out cleanly I might say.

I have already order a replacement mirror, I found them on eBay for $15 each! So I got 2 passenger and 1 driver side (1 on, spare).

Sydney: if your not melting, your drowning!

Justin