Australia is fighting a huge brushfire, perhaps biggest in history, in Victoria

[lebkuchen]

Melbourne is in Victoria. Friends are reporting that 1/5th of Victoria is either burned or on fire at the moment. Going outside it appears foggy - but it's actually smoke everywhere. The sun can barely shine through it. Right now they're using firefighters from New Zealand and elsewhere, as well as army troops.

Temps are in the low 100's.

Prime Minister John Howard said the fires were "very, very scary stuff and the terrible combination of circumstances — high temperature, low humidity, all of those things — are very bad indeed."

[opihimoimoi]

1. SEND IN FF'S from California, Hawaii, etc Send our Nat Guard too

Them Aussies always came to our aid...can't we send help when THEY NEED IT???

Get that Bush to the Globe so he can see where Austrailia is FGS...Its not an ISLAND..its a CONTINENT...has millions of Peeps.

Think of them Wallabies and roos dying cause of the fire....God Help those creatures....

[MazeRat7]

2. The most recent satellite image I could find was 2 days ago.. but you can see the smoke...

And that was 48hrs ago.... I'll update if when there is a new one.

NOTE:
I'm pasting the link to NOT include the picture... the low-res version is about 7.2M and I don't want to kill their servers or piss off those on dialup..

Just copy and past into a browser window.

mrrs.eo.esa.int/mrrs/images/2006/12/07/MER_FR__0PNPDE20061207_234127_000004472053_00345_24948_3847.N1_45793451_image_0260.jpg

[lebkuchen]

4. I feel for those w/asthma.

Thanks for the pic. I will forward the URL.

Today I'm hearing that the temps have dropped considerably...

Sunday was 42C, or 107.6F.

Tonight the temp is supposed to get down to 10C, or 50F.

You'd think tornados would form with those temperature extremes floating around in the same area. Okinawa had a couple of damaging tornadoes last month, flipping cars and so forth, so the southern hemisphere isn't exempt.

[Cha]

3. My son-in-law is from Melbourne..

I hope the brave firefighters get these fires put out soon!