Roast kangaroos: or, Australia's big fire

[Gamemako]

Actually, for Vic that's ****ing toasting. Vic and NSW have generally temperate climates; average high temperature in Sydney in February (lawl, southern hemisphere) isn't even 80F (IIRC, it's 26C). Come live in the southeastern United States and the temps average 95F in July (35C to those who can't read Fahrenheit). Not to mention humidity. The temperatures have been really, really high lately (nearing 40C) in Oz, though, and a combination of climatological factors and the aforementioned human influence have made a real mess of things.

The temps don't average 95f in July, you're out by 10f or so. I'm not sure why you're suggesting that temperatures are very high lately, since they have a history of regularly being high.

Temps for Sydney -- 79F, reportedly. Similarly, for the 2nd4th-largest city in the state of Georgia in the United States, Savannah, is 92F. Of course, that's a high-humidity one. If you want a drier place, try Phoenix. Yeah, that's an average high of 40C in a city the size of Sydney. It's in the middle of the freaking desert.

Yeah, it gets warm now and then in Sydney. It's just not regularly as hot as it is in some other, more hellish parts of the world.

//EDIT: Fact-checked myself on Wikipedia. At least Savannah is better known than the other two...

 

[italiano]

That's the average high, not the daily average. Savannah and Phoenix are also not on the coast, and you'll find inland cities/towns generally have a greater range as land heats and cools more quickly than water. There's also the thicker pollution in a city and concrete, and I imagine this reflects the heat. If we're talking about fires, the average temperature is irrelevant anyway. What is important is that the area can be hot, dry and windy, and while Australia isn't unique in this, it's much hotter, drier and windier than most other parts of the globe. We're really talking heat waves here, not average temperature.

 

[Gamemako]

That's the average high, not the daily average. Savannah and Phoenix are also not on the coast, and you'll find inland cities/towns generally have a greater range as land heats and cools more quickly than water. There's also the thicker pollution in a city and concrete, and I imagine this reflects the heat. If we're talking about fires, the average temperature is irrelevant anyway. What is important is that the area can be hot, dry and windy, and while Australia isn't unique in this, it's much hotter, drier and windier than most other parts of the globe. We're really talking heat waves here, not average temperature.

Phoenix is not; Savannah is. You'll find the same sort of temperatures if you go 110km south to Brunswick, also on the Atlantic Ocean. So is Mobile, Alabama, and so is New Orleans, Louisiana (well, they are on the Gulf of Mexico, not the Atlantic Ocean, but anyway). As for reflecting heat, that's an interesting hypothesis you have there, but completely irrelevant because Sydney is also a city with a pollution problem.

Anyway, plains fires are common in Africa and the American Midwest at least. I'm not a meteorologist, though, so I can't say for sure, and I haven't lived in Africa, so that's secondhand knowledge. As for the occasional messy spot, I think it was last year or the year before that the city of Atlanta, largest city in Georgia and about twice the size of Melbourne, was blanketed by an even thicker haze than it's accustomed to after some lovely fires in the southern part of the state. Or so I was told about it. And it's not like there's ever a summer we don't listen to daily reports about fires here, there and everywhere (especially California). But anyway, why am I even comparing freak meteorological occurrences? Crazy **** happens.

 

[Lt. of the tower]

Death toll has risen to 200 I last heard 

And a firefighter was killed when a tree fell on the vehicle he was in.