“From a Fire Perspective, Queensland Has Changed. Australia Has Changed.”

I won’t add too many comments.

Last November bushfires devastated Queensland. The photo below (November 29, 7:30am), taken from a distance of approximately 36 thousand kilometers, seems to show the coast between Townsville/Mackay (towards the upper-left corner) and Brisbane (just out of the picture, beyond the lower-right corner).

(source)

To give an idea of the magnitude of those fires: the road distance between Mackay and Brisbane is about 950 km, while that between Los Angeles and San Francisco is 620 km and that between Paris and Hamburg is around 900 km (Google distance data).

But that photo doesn’t represent the total area affected by the fire (coverage of the Cape York Peninsula, not shown: further towards the northwest of the photo above). I can’t say how reliable this map is and I’m sure the fires shown there weren’t all burning at the same time, but it places the fires in the wider geographical and Queensland fire season context (note the barely visible town names).

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Given the data freely available on the internet I could find, it’s impossible for me to compare the Queensland and the earlier California fires. The Californian death toll (over 100 fatalities) was certainly much higher (QLD: 1 or 2). How much of that difference can be attributed to the higher Californian population density compared to the lower one in Queensland is anyone’s guess.

                          QLD       CA
=========================================   
Population (million)    4.88 a    39.54 b
Area (million km²)      1.85       0.42   
Density (persons/km²)   2.63      93.26
               
(a) Census 2016
(b) Google data

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The ABC has more satellite coverage of the Queensland bushfire. This link, from Mark Doman and the ABC Digital Story Innovation Team, covers the area roughly surrounding Mackay and further inland to the west of it. (The title was taken from Andrew Sturgess, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services spokesman). From that story:

The fires were so intense they even penetrated rainforests [towards Cape York Peninsula] — a phenomenal occurrence which has astounded and alarmed fire scientists.

“Rainforests are non-burnable. That’s one of their distinguishing features. So if a rainforest is burning, that’s really significant,” said David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science at the University of Tasmania.

Ground level photo coverage:

(source)

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Thus far, temperatures around the southeast end of the continent have been in general unusually mild, particularly when compared to last year’s. Recently there have been rains -- even heavy rains and an intense and damaging hailstorm around Sydney last week -- but largely limited to the coastal fringe. The forecast for this weekend, New Year’s eve and New Year’s day is for sunny weather with temperatures in excess of 40°C (104 F) around most of regional New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Drought conditions in those regions are still prevalent.