Parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia are bracing for extreme heatwave conditions that the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting to be “the worst” since those experienced during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.<\/p>\n
Temperatures set to climb into mid-40s in some areas, including cities on the banks of the Murray River.<\/p>\n
The BOM is forecasting a maximum temperature of 40 degrees Celsius in Port Pirie on Tuesday and 45C on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Temperatures in Mildura, Swan Hill and Renmark are expected to hit 44 degrees on Wednesday before a slight increase on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n
The mercury is tipped to climb beyond 40C in the Latrobe Valley, Albury Wodonga, Bendigo, Horsham, Benalla and Shepparton.<\/p>\n
Geelong and Melbourne are forecast to reach 40C and 41C, respectively, on Wednesday before experiencing a significant drop on Thursday and a rise again on Friday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Victorians are being urged to be ready for the heat. (ABC News: Damien Hooper)<\/p>\n
Senior meteorologist Simon Timke said overnight conditions between Wednesday and Friday would also be “pretty hot”.<\/p>\n
“[We are] not really going to see too much relief from the very hot weather until Saturday,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Fairly widespread areas [will be in an] extreme and severe heatwave later in the week, into South Australia and New South Wales.”<\/p>\n
Fire bans and train delays<\/p>\n
The Country Fire Authority has already issued a total fire ban for Victoria’s northern country, which includes the municipalities of Campaspe, Greater Bendigo, greater Shepparton, Loddon, Moira and Strathbogie.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CFA chief officer Jason Heffernan is calling on residents to be prepared. (Supplied: Niamh Sutton)<\/p>\n
CFA chief officer Jason Heffernan said more fire bans were likely to be issued through the week.<\/p>\n
“We’re asking people to follow the strict conditions associated with the total fire ban declaration,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Heffernan said the conditions would make it difficult to contain fires should they ignite.<\/p>\n
“Understand how the increased fire risk will impact you and ensure your fire plan covers all possible contingencies,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
V\/Line trains will run to an alternative timetable for areas affected by extreme heat this week.\u00a0 (ABC Goulburn Murray: Ethan Seiderman)<\/p>\n
The V\/Line network will introduce a revised schedule for the areas affected by hot weather on Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“Trains that usually travel at up to 160km\/h need to slow down to 90km\/h or less because steel tracks expand in the heat,” V\/Line said on its website.<\/p>\n
“This means journey times may be extended and some services will be replaced by air-conditioned coaches for all or part of the journey.”<\/p>\n
Grassfire concerns<\/p>\n
Firefighters are worried about an increased risk of farm fires this week due to a late harvest. (ABC News: Carl Saville)<\/p>\n
CFA members across central and northern Victoria are warning a late harvest poses an increased fire risk over the next three days.<\/p>\n
“Over the past two weeks we’ve had cropping and grass fires in the north of the region around Patchewallock and Charlton,” said CFA North West Region Deputy Chief Officer Trevor Weston.<\/p>\n
“There is still a reasonable amount of cropping that is underway and yet to be completed.<\/p>\n
“We’re asking farmers where there is the opportunity to postpone harvest and cropping on these extreme days that they do.”<\/p>\n
Mr Weston said grassfire risk was also high, particularly in areas where grasslands border residential developments.<\/p>\n
“Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen a drying of fuels across the whole state,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We do see vast grasslands adjoining right up to new residential areas, so that urban-rural interface is our greatest concern. It’s what keeps me awake at night.”<\/p>\n
Firefighters are also bracing for changing conditions later in the week.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had briefings with the Bureau of Meteorology and Friday is still unpredictable.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia are bracing for extreme heatwave conditions that the Bureau…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,107153,61838,149687,58549,210571,210572,210570,3286,44,210573],"class_list":["post-393839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-black-summer","tag-bom","tag-bureau-of-meterology","tag-cfa","tag-fire-bans-nsw","tag-fire-bans-sa","tag-fire-bans-victoria","tag-heatwave","tag-news","tag-total-fire-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}