Fire Weather, a new approach

[HansR]

Still breathable air?

[Phil23]

Still breathable air?

It was.
We're pretty tough in the bush here.

The odour is noticeable, but not overpowering. I do notice it has a minor trigger on breathing though. Maybe leading to a puff or two of Ventalin a day.

Just to amuse myself & take a break from the brain wracking a bit at lunch time, I decided to pull some WeatherZone data into Excel.

This is from their last 24 hours page.
https://www.weatherzone.com.au/station. ... 18&list=ob
Just wanted to see what it looked like in graphical form.

Came up with this.

Graph.JPG

Legend.JPG

Not the Legend does not apply to any colours in the chart.
Just added it for reference to the scale of 0 to 100+.

At Mid-day we've hit 45 & typically wind will pick up in the next few hours.

[HansR]

@phill: So, it seems the warning for NSW is just Very High (Yellow). Surprising to say the least because the weather does not really change in the context of wind, humidity and drought. Although it is not really a very strong wind, a 20 - 40 km/h wind is not calm either and for today (wednesday) a prediction of 8% humidity is very low. I still don't understand how you can live in air as dry as that. It must be uncomfortable. Also the fires are still there.

I do not really understand the NSW official fire warning level. I stick with the high (catastrophic) warning level of pwsFWI. The fires are pretty close too, so wind may distribute the fire easily to Goonoowigal and the Tingha plateau if wind turns the right direction.

Take care.

[Phil23]

If you take a look at my wind graphs around 6 to 7pm yesterday you can see the wind pick up & swing to a predomantly Easterly.

We could see a smoke front rolling in at 6:55 & it was over us in a matter of minutes.

This photo was taken at 7:07pm, with the sun still at an altitude of 5.8°.
The Sun could be viewed directly it was so dull.

Capture.JPG

Still much the same this morning.

[Phil23]

Think this works.
Visible Sattelite imagery from yesterday.
Only past 18 hours is available.


http://weather.inverellit.com/images/Ne ... ellite.mp4

[HansR]

That's quite an impressive image. Thanks!

[Phil23]

From my East facing WeatherCam.

Not huge activity until 6:45.

http://weather.inverellit.com/images/SmokeEast.mp4

[HansR]

I am going to download and tweet them.
Almost surreal passing of the smoke front. Thanks for sharing!

[Phil23]

Looks Like we have 3 new fires South of Bundarra.

Approximately 50-60km away.

Phil.

[HansR]

But you have a rain prediction!

[Phil23]

Looks Like we have 3 new fires South of Bundarra.

https://www.inverelltimes.com.au/story/ ... m/?cs=1523

[HansR]

Well, that is some story. This makes any action for raising awareness, measuring, predicting and fighting fire pretty useless.

[Phil23]

Just to amuse myself I decided to pull some WeatherZone data into Excel.

Been adding to this a couple of times a day just for curiosity.

It runs for about a week now.

Can post the raw data if it's of any interest for analysis purposes.

Graph.JPG

[HansR]

Interesting graph @Phil. It seems as if humidity is the single most important factor in fire susceptibility. That really is against the scientific evidence (which is not uniquely conclusive btw). In addition and as a result it seems as if at night the highly inflamable forests suddenly become much less dangerous: so, lets have a bbq at midnight . The warning level is very low anyway, seen from the weather and the number of fires.

For me it shows the weatherzone does not use the McArthur FWI, they use a simplified system with the same colouring code.

I repeat: hourly FWI is contraproductive, it has no meaning.

(You can attach the file for reference, that would be nice)

[HansR]

Bw: happy for you to get some rain