Critical fire weather events during the Australian summer fires of 2006-7

The 2006-7 summertime fire season in southern Australia commenced early due to the preceding drought leaving fuels extra-ordinarily dry. Wildfires in eastern Tasmania began in late August, and a major fire event occurred there in October, with fires right to the urban interface on the northern outskirts of Hobart. In New South Wales massive fires occurred in late spring in the Blue Mountains, in Victoria the “mega-fire” in the Victorian Alpine areas ran for some 2 months, and major fires also occurred in South Australia and Western Australia.

A number of new forecast applications, generally based on operational mesoscale NWP model output, have been developed in recent years to focus on particular needs of fire weather forecasters, and many of these were available in either operational or experimental forms during this season. These include wind change guidance products, fields of fire danger index, gustiness forecasts, and techniques to understand the linking of mid-tropospheric dry air to the surface. Examples of these products, and how they related to both the more traditional synoptic forecast guidance, and to the critical fire behaviour days will be illustrated for events in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, and New South Wales. Emphasis will be placed on how these forecast processes can be incorporated into both meterological practice, and into incident management.