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Thu 04 Aug 2022
In the summer of 2019/20 a large portion of the eastern part of Australia caught fire. There was a lot of destruction over a long period that impacted a lot of people, and this period earned the nickname 'The Black Summer'. Then, just as things began to cool - a pandemic.
Also, since then, it's rained. A lot. So much rain in fact that, barely a year after the Black Summer, were the 'The Floods of 2021'. Neither of these nicknames are very original, sure, but it is what it is. And it's still raining.
Since the beginning of 2020 we've had consecutive weather patterns which have meant a lot of rain - in the winters it's been the 'negative Indian Ocean Dipole'[1], and in summer it's been La Niña[2]. Both will cause unusual amounts of rain to fall here, and that has certainly happened. With water comes life, and that means more fuel load.
The fuel load here was already quite high, because this part of the world missed the bushfires of 2019/20, and the bush here was, in all honestly, due to go up then. But it didn't, and in the 2 years between now and then the load has become much greater. Young trees have all the water they need to grow, but not enough space, so they fall and die, and join the others already there. Grasses grow thick, high, and everywhere. Weeds colonise firebreaks, rock outcrops and the paddocks of lazy hobby-farmers.
All this will burn, there's no doubt about that. And since the climate here is changing to give us longer, hotter summers, the opportunity for any fuel load to burn more intensely is just increasing.
We have a large fuel load, which is being added to with another very wet winter. The next summer that's not cool & wet will have a large fuel load waiting for it.
[1] (https) - A good explainer on the negative Indian Ocean Ocean Dipole, by abc.net.au
[2] (https) - A good explainer on La Niña, by abc.net.au