As fires rage across Australia this Boxing Day, Senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, Dean Narramore, has more on the current weather warnings.
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00:00Extreme fire danger ratings are current for everywhere in Victoria except for East Gippsland.
00:08That does include the Grampians National Park where we do have that very large fire ongoing
00:12and the Melbourne metropolitan area.
00:14And that's because the combination of hot, dry and windy conditions is leading to these
00:19extreme fire dangers.
00:21What that means is if fires get going or already ongoing through Grampians National Park, that
00:26the weather conditions over the next 6 to 12 hours or possibly longer mean that any
00:30fire will be uncontrollable and uncontainable in these conditions.
00:34We also have a severe weather warning current for damaging winds for much of Western Victoria
00:39and once again that does include the Grampians National Park, with winds of 60 to 80 km an
00:44hour and we could see some gusting in excess of 90 km an hour.
00:48That's enough to bring down trees and power lines and also cause some property damage
00:52but also is going to cause major concerns for the fire around the Grampians.
00:55Yeah and the Grampians National Park, that bushfire has been burning for 10 days in a
01:00row now and so the emergency warnings are to leave immediately for residents in certain
01:05regions right?
01:06Yeah that's exactly right, you heard it earlier with the fires as well, it's a very dangerous
01:10situation around there and the weather is only going to get worse, the winds are only
01:13going to get stronger as we move into the latter morning and early afternoon.
01:18And in South Australia, let's move there now, where extreme fire conditions have been forecast,
01:24there's a total fire ban across several regions so hopefully no new fires start today hey?
01:32Yeah that's always the hope and we've seen a few showers but not thunderstorms yet but
01:36hopefully we don't see any more.
01:37As you heard earlier, that cold change, cold front is actually now moving through the Adelaide
01:41area and then it's going to move into eastern parts of South Australia as we move into the
01:46lunchtime, early afternoon time frame, then it's that change that will move into western
01:50Victoria as we move into the mid-afternoon and central Victoria into the late afternoon.
01:55But back into South Australia with those cool conditions, that cold front is going to bring
02:00those strong and gusty winds as well, so those fires that are occurring across northern Adelaide
02:05at the moment, we could see pretty big direction changes on those fires in the next hour or
02:10two, so please watch out for that.
02:12But much cooler conditions are likely this afternoon into this evening and as we go into
02:16Friday and the weekend, so thankfully once we get through today we should be good through
02:21South Australia for a while.
02:22So Dean we've heard a lot about fire danger in two states, what can we expect in the rest
02:27of the country?
02:28Yeah so we're zooming out across much of the country, pretty quiet conditions and high
02:33humidity keeping fire dangers pretty low through eastern parts of the country, though this
02:38change will move into New South Wales tomorrow so we're likely to see high to extreme fire
02:42dangers for much of northern and eastern New South Wales tomorrow, particularly northeast
02:47New South Wales so watch out for that.
02:50Temperatures are going to spike as well with temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s for
02:53inland areas, could even get into the low 40s for western Sydney.
02:58Queensland fire dangers are fine but western Queensland are looking at getting temperatures
03:01into the high 40s today so very hot through there.
03:04NT we're okay but back in WA we do have high fire dangers across much of northern and western
03:10WA today and tomorrow and then we could start seeing heat build over the weekend and extreme
03:15fire dangers likely much of the southwestern parts as we move into early next week so yeah
03:19a lot going on around the country.
03:21And I've got one final question for you, so this is a stressful time for a lot of people
03:25especially in Victoria and South Australia, they could be experiencing information overload
03:29from all this, so what do you think is the key information that they need to know?
03:35Yeah it's all about that timing of the change but also if you're near any of those fire
03:39zones or fire doesn't get going with you, it really comes down to getting that information
03:43from emergency services in terms of evacuates, emergency warnings etc so yeah really make
03:48sure you have the Vic Emergency App in Victoria or the SA Emergency App in South Australia
03:53and get any updates on that.