Firefighters spending Christmas Day protecting fire-ravaged communities of New South Wales will be given a reprieve from the weather, with light rain forecast to fall over the fire grounds.
“It will be enough to temper fire danger but not enough to put out the fires,” Diana Eadie, of the Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Some showers and drizzle are forecast to fall across central NSW, including the Gospers Mountain megafire and Green Wattle Creek fire in the southern ranges.
North-eastern NSW, where fires have been burning since October, will see some thunderstorms and isolated heavy rain on Christmas Day. That could bring more lightning, Eadie said, but the increased humidity should again dampen the fire risk.
In South Australia, firefighters working to control the Cudlee Creek fire, which destroyed 87 homes and burned through 40,000ha in the Adelaide Hills, will be dealing with hot and dry but not too windy conditions, with the fire danger rating set at very high.
The capital cites along the east coast are forecast to have fairly mid weather, with 26C in Sydney, 28C in Melbourne, 24C in Brisbane and 25C in Hobart. Perth and Darwin are both forecast to reach 36C, while Adelaide is expecting 31C.
Fire conditions are expected to worsen again at the weekend, with SA experiencing a return to very high temperatures and strong northerly winds on Sunday. That hot air from north-west Western Australia will move across Victoria on Monday and NSW on Tuesday, bringing extreme to severe fire weather and temperatures of up to 16C above average.
“It has the potential to once again reach those severe-to-extreme fire dangers,” Eadie said.
It may not be quite as hot as the record-breaking stretch of hot days last week, she said, but the fire risk could be comparable. “Certainly another very nasty day,” Eadie said. “Whether it’s quite as bad as we saw last week, it remains to be seen.”
Melbourne is forecast to reach 41C on Monday, while Penrith in western Sydney will reach 45C. Mildura, in north-west Victoria, is likely to reach 44C for three days in a row, from Saturday to Monday.
