Seems the thread no longer belongs in the Pit, so I will start a new one here. Which will guarantee it will fade. 
Hope you guys are all okay. Have a friend in Geelong who says the weather was disgusting there today.
Yeah, it’s cooler here now (9pm and 30 degrees), so 46 degrees is old news.
We kept pretty cool today - I made the dumb move of cycling Beach Road this morning - down was OK, but the wind kicked up on the ride back which make it tough going. But cooled down with a trip to Doncaster Mall, which means we’ve not had the aircon on all day - figure that will have saved a few bucks.
How are things near the fires? That wind can’t have helped.
And just curious- why do so many of you guys have evaporative air con rather than refrigerated? Not that I know a great deal about either.
Not sure of the origin of these photos, but I had no idea koalas would choose to get that close to humans - guess it has been very hot!
A lot of those koala pictures circulating. I also read of possums with burnt paws from the heat.
Meh- I’d smoke any of them.
The cool change hit Adelaide this arvo. Not dramatic, but a definite relief. Looks like we’ve got until about Friday before it starts heading up again.
Riding to Kaniva for the Custom Car and Bike Show next weekend. It might be a night time ride if the weather’s too bad…just have to watch out for Skippy.
I was considering driving to Perth in a Lancer- no roo bars. I decided that was a stupid idea. Qantas will be my driver.
We have evaporative because it’s much cheaper to run to over the whole house.
It works very well except on very humid days (not all that often in Melbourne) or when it gets as hot as today. It was 46 outside and about 36 in the computer room (which faces north). On days of 20-35 it’s terrific for use and as the sun goes down we leave it running on a timer until we’re pretty sure we’re going to be asleep (say 1:00am) and then it turns itself off and the house cools down naturally.
Today it was blowing warm air but still substantially cooler than the air outside which was like standing in front of an open oven.
The cool change came through around 7:00pm (or so) so we opened all the doors and windows but left the air-con on but not long after the wind died so it’s very still outside at the moment.
As far as temperatures went, Melbourne (20km east of me) was 46.4 and Avalon (30km south of me) was 47.9. It was highest it’s ever been in Melbourne today and with the wind, I can certainly agree. It was just appalling.
Having only ever lived in Melbourne I can’t appreciate locations that have this level of heat all the time and I have no real idea how they cope. Surely one generation can’t adjust that fast.
My brother in law used to live just north of Brisbane so I’d visit a couple of times and year. They lived in a Queenslander and you couldn’t be indoors during the day. It was like living in an oven. At night though it cooled down so it was bearable to sleep, but by 7:00am it was back to oven temperatures again. I couldn’t live there with the humidity. It was unbearable.
Evaporative aircon works by passing air through a big water thingo, the air absorbs the moisture and cools down in the process. The result is cooler more humid air sent into the house. The downside is that it doesn’t work if the air is already very humid so you won’t see them up in the tropics. The good thing about them is that you can (and should) have windows open in each room and the cool air isn’t dry the way refrigerated aircon air is.
Ours has worked very well over the last few weeks with the inside of the house feeling very comfortable.
Fourteen people confirmed dead in Victorian fires so far today, but police believe that the real number may be around forty or more. Dozens of houses have been destroyed as well, not to mention the thousands of animals, both domestic and wild who have been killed and injured.
There are at least nine major fires still extremely active in Victoria. The town of Kinglake is under enormous threat, six people have died there and there seem to be people trapped in the town. I think the news about Kinglake in the morning will be tragic.
A number of those reported killed so far have been in their cars. Please people, if you’re going to evacuate from a fire, go early. Don’t try and leave at the last minute and flee ahead of a fire front, it’s just too dangerous.
A large fire is burning into Bendigo, which is a major regional city in Central Victoria.
It’s been a dreadful day and is going to be a terrible night for many people across the State.
We’re just south of the Kinglake fire, near St Andrews. Was up in Kinglake last week - now the shop we had coffee in has gone - the whole main road has gone. We are on fire alert and have instigated our fire plan, although the wind has calmed down. It’s been a long hot day keeping regular watch for embers and keeping the gutters full of water and the verandas wet. We’ve just had a warning for the area to stay on fire alert, although it is certainly less smokey than it’s been all day - the wind change has turned the fire away from us. We’re hearing from locals that the news out of Kinglake is going to get a lot worse in terms of deaths and houses gone. They can’t get medical support into Kinglake at the moment, and there are a lot of people burnt who can’t get help. It is just awful.
I don’t think jokes about burnt wildlife are appropriate. Livestock and wild animals are suffering terribly in massive numbers and will be doing so for a long time. Even if they aren’t burnt, and millions are, there will be no food or water for so many, and they will die slowly.
I’ve only been back for 2 years, and wasn’t living here for Ash Wednesday, so this is a new thing for me. I’ve often cycled up to Kinglake - awful to hear about how serious it is up there. And despite the cooler weather tomorrow, the wind is still meant to be high, so not much relief expected. 
Quite a day. It’s nice here now. The fires must be bad - I thought I’d post a link to the DSE fire page and it tells you to fuck off if you haven’t got important business looking at the page.
Look after yourselves, folks.
There are now 25 confirmed dead and that number is sure to rise. Marysville, a very beautiful little town in the mountains has all but disappeared, reports this morning suggest that there is one building left standing. As well as Kinglake, it looks like Clonbinane and Wandong have been very badly damaged.
There are suggested deaths and fifty houses were lost on the outskirts of Bendigo, which is a major regional city of 100,000 people.
The death toll is tragic. I think that as a country we may have got complacent. The past few years we’ve had big fires, but the lessons of Ash Wednesday were well learned and the loss of life has been minor.
Just from the reports I’ve been hearing it seems a number of people died who shouldn’t have because they left it too late to leave.
The devastation is beyond belief. I think we all believed that Ash Wednesday wouldn’t happen again; that we were better equipped, better prepared and better educated.
But it seems that given the right mix of extreme weather and vulnerable communities we’re still at the mercy of nature.
Adding outrage to tragedy it appears that a number of these fires were deliberately lit.
Those photos with the cyclists were taken on a road near me (old freeway, Adelaide Hills). My friend whose husband cycles says the same thing also happened to him there last week. The friend he was with gave the koala her only bottle of water.
I do feel for you in the southern part of the country. It wasn’t too bad here in my part of Sydney yesterday (max of 30 or so).
It’s a ghastly thought, isn’t it? I’m afraid that one of these days an arson suspect will get lynched by an angry mob.
Cicero - My cat ate the icecream! He loved it. Thanks for the tip. Yesterday it got to 47.1 here in Mildura. We had hot northerly winds that sprang up at about 10.00am. I was up at 7.00 yesterday and had all th washing on the line by 8.00. I brought it all in at 8.30 - bone dry. I’m so sorry for those who have lost livestock, home and loved ones in the bushfires - the arsonist(s) responsible need to be publicly flogged and then charged with murder. Fucking idiots.
You have crazy pyros starting fires in those conditions? Fuck! I’m down with the public flogging idea. And I know a bunch of other people who would agree. At least the big fire we had in August '07 was started by lightning, so unless that makes Mama Gaia a crazy fucking pyro, we didn’t have anybody to blame. If there had been, though, I don’t want to think about what would have happened to them. It would have been uuuuugleeee. And well-deserved.
Be careful all of you!
35 now confirmed dead and towns like Marysvale and Kingslake have virtually ceased to exist. This is unspeakably sad.