No, I'm not missing a PAD already but yesterday's was fairly pedestrian and can wait. This also isn't the greatest shot I've ever done but the light was changing constantly and I had only moments to grab this.

There have been some disastrous bushfires in Tasmania, as I've referred to in some of my PADs from our Tasmanian visit late last year. There have also been some serious threats in other parts of the country as a virtual "heat dome" descends over it, to the extent that the Weather Bureau had to add an extra colour to its temperature charts. Previously they only went to black indicating temperatures ranging from 46 to 50 degrees, the new one (purple) denotes 50 to 54 and was needed because of a hot zone in central South Australia and a big hello to Yvonne on that one.

The east coast of NSW at least had been spared much of the heat due to easterly onshore breezes as I mentioned in Sunday's PAD, but that came to a halt today as the winds swung around to come from the west and therefore the inland. Western NSW had already been subjected to horrendous heat and now it was the entire state's turn. The Illawarra was one of the original three zones of the state (later increased to five zones) to have a bushfire rating of "catastrophic" with very high westerly winds (forecast to reach 50km/h though I'm not sure whether they did) and a forecast maximum of 43 degrees. In layman's terms that rating means that in the event of a nearby fire your choices are (a) run like h3ll and you'd better have decided where beforehand, or (b) kiss your soon-to-be-barbecued backside goodbye.

Thankfully there were no serious fires in my part of the Illawarra though there were some south of Wollongong, the smoke from which I have no doubt contributed to this somewhat sinister if photogenic sky.

As of this afternoon there were more than 130 fires burning across NSW (40 of them uncontained) which had taken out over 55,000 hectares. (Though amazingly no homes or lives as yet.) Thankfully a cooler change should be along before morning, but many of us are pining for a nice, wet, icy cold winter's day right now. (Hmm, coincidentally I just noticed that my "Last Year" image was of a summer downpour...)

Last Year