Under a Blood Red Sky: Photos of the Canberra firestorm

[JohnT]

Sweet. Nothing like making the missus nervous... makes one feel all important and powerful and crap.

[Loif]

Just saw some footage on the news this evening. I hope you and your family are okay AH. That is truly frightening.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by JohnT
Sweet. Nothing like making the missus nervous... makes one feel all important and powerful and crap.

Well hardly - she was very calm throughout. It was more like she was rolling her eyes at me. She didn't get excited about it, helped me do practical stuff, gave sensible advice, voice of common sense etc.

I think its the awe of it that got me. You knew it was very dangerous but at the same time you're watching this incredible weather event. It was like the end of the world for a while there. You really couldn't believe your eyes. It was like your mundane everyday world was now in another apocalyptic reality.

[Lancer]

Cheers to Mrs Horse! Sounds like a great woman.

[chequita guevara]

You guys shoulda had danger sex.

[DRoseDARs]

Here's something that might interest those of you living downwind of the smoke plume of ANY major forest fire: If the smoke is thick enough, it will blot out the sun, but if you can catch it before its disk is completely obscured, you can look through binoculars or a telescope (well...at the image projected onto a sheet of paper held near the eyepiece) at the GREATLY dimmed disk and see in great detail actual sunspots. Depending on the solar cycle, how dim the image is, and how near or far you hold the paper, you won't just see "black dots," you should be able to see the frilled edges of the sunspots (don't know the scientific terms). We had nasty fires burning near Reno a few years back and the smoke plume was just huge, and it WAS snowing ash for a while. While trying to follow a tanker plane making a run on the leading edge, I thought to center on the sun and was amazed by the amount of detail I could see.

***Remember: NEVER look directly into the sun with binoculars or telescopes, no matter how thick the smoke is. You're still baking you're eyes with radiation other than visible light...***

[devilmunchkin]

what is a fire storm?

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by devilmunchkin
what is a fire storm?

A forest fire that has grown large enough to have its own localized weather pattern.

Kinda similar to how large cities can affect their weather since they act as heat sinks. <--- Refered to as "heat islands."

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You guys shoulda had danger sex.

He never said they didn't.

[Case]

I could see Navy Seahawk helicopters water bombing the nearby hills from my driveway this afternoon (they were just puting out minor fires ahead of a major wind change).

[Alexander's Horse]

Oh - is that what that was :b

[Alexander's Horse]

This is a shot of the firefront taken a mile or so from my house when I dashed down to the hardware warehouse to get a few things. Incredibly, shops were still open and some people were still going about normally, I passed an (empty) bus still plying its route

We got blacked out from about 4pm till the early hours of the morning. The power went just before the fires reached our area so we were using torches and the only info we had on what was going on was battery powered radio.

[Skanky Burns]

Doesn't sound (or look) too good.

I heard that it reached over 40 C yesterday.

[Case]

Did you see the fire front at the bottom of your street? I was down having a look at it when the southerly change suddenly came in, and it nearly lept the road!

[Alexander's Horse]

Yes I did - in fact I phoned it in - we saw it start as a spot fire ahead of the main front as we were driving home.

Here's a shot of Dominic in the car when I was taking the last photo. The 2 bigger boys were in Sydney. He was scared and stayed with me at all times. Patrick the baby was too young to be scared. He liked the emergency siren noise they were sounding on the radio every 15 minutes before state of emergency announcements and did a little jig and pointed at the radio whenever it came on.