Victoria’s fire grounds will be at their most dangerous in the coming hours, as a cool change provides relief from sweltering temperatures but stirs up erratic fire activity.
The wind, shifting to the south-west, will blow over the Longwood fire ground in the next hour or two, before passing over the Walwa blaze in the state’s north-west between about midnight and 3am on Saturday, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Temperatures have plummeted 15 degrees with the change, but senior meteorologist Angus Hines said the hours that follow the wind change over fire grounds will be “crucial”.
“Those fires start to blow in a new path, and also, because those wind changes can be really quite blustery and gusty, and not really consistent, it can really make for quite erratic fire behaviour,” Hines said.
“The first half of the day tomorrow will be a pretty key time to see if those fires do flare up again, or if they’re able to be a little bit more contained than they were today.”
Winds should drop off overnight after a day of gusts up to 100km/h. Fires are currently burning in all Victorian districts.
After an uncertain few hours on the fire grounds, the cool change would ultimately bring in milder air, cooler conditions, more humidity and cloud cover to Victoria, Hines said.
“So overall, that will act to suppress the fire danger across the state from overnight tonight into the weekend, but in the short term – the next few hours, as that wind changes, and that wind surges quite strongly for a couple of hours – it’s continuing to be really challenging,” Hines said.
By Saturday, winds would be calmer in Victoria’s north, but still blustery across the state’s south, dropping down to between 30km/h and 50km/h (compared with between 60km/h and 100km/h today). Sunday would be calmer still, Hines said.
