The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired natural-color observations of burned land and thick smoke covering Australia’s Kangaroo Island on 9 January 2020. According to news reports, at least 156,000 hectares (600 square miles, nearly one-third of the land area) have burned and 50 homes have been destroyed on the island of 4,700 people. Photo: Lauren Dauphin / NASA Earth Observatory
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired natural-color observations of burned land and thick smoke covering Australia’s Kangaroo Island on 9 January 2020. According to news reports, at least 156,000 hectares (600 square miles, nearly one-third of the land area) have burned and 50 homes have been destroyed on the island of 4,700 people. Photo: Lauren Dauphin / NASA Earth Observatory

By Andrew Freedman
10 January 2020

(The Washington Post) – Australia’s bushfire crisis worsened Thursday night into Friday as hot, dry and windy conditions redeveloped across the country’s hard-hit southeast, causing two large blazes to merge into one. The new “megafire” measures about 1.5 million acres, about the size of the state of Delaware or roughly eight times as large as New York City.

“What we’re really seeing with a number of these fires merging is a number of small fires started by lightning strikes, across the landscape,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service spokesman Anthony Clark told the Sydney Morning Herald. “And as they grow, we see fires merging,” Clark said.

Separately, an emergency warning was issued for a blaze in the Southern Highlands region, known as the Morton Fire, that threatened populated areas. […]

The strong winds were reaching speeds of up to 55 mph, lofting embers out ahead of fires to start new spot fires, and propelling the front edges of fires forward at high rates of speed, breaching containment lines.

As many fires are still burning in Australia, a regular GLOBE Observer (Glenn Evans in Coogee, New South Wales, about 10 km/6 miles southeast of Sydney), has been taking consistent clouds observations from the same location over the last few weeks, sometimes multiple observations on the same day. In this short video, you can see a compilation of their ground observations in November and December 2019, facing west and south alongside satellite imagery from the same day taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Notice the sky coloration when heavy smoke plumes are visible in the satellite image, as well as the days when there is both haze and other types of clouds in the sky. Video: NASA GLOBE Observer

The emergency warning issued for the Morton Fire near Bundanoon advised residents to seek shelter, noting, “It is too late to leave.”

“Protect yourself from the heat of the fire,” the Rural Fire Service said.

Emergency warnings were also issued for fires in parts of Victoria.

Conditions were so extreme Friday morning that weather forecasters issued a severe thunderstorm warning for a fire-generated thunderstorm in northeastern Victoria, specifically for damaging winds. […]

This is not the first megafire to form during Australia’s nightmarish bushfire season. The Gospers Mountain Fire near Sydney is also the result of multiple fires merging into one, and it has repeatedly sent thick, hazardous smoke into highly populated areas.

Scientists have published numerous studies showing that Australia’s climate is becoming hotter and drier because of human-caused climate change, and these trends are dramatically amplifying the risk of bushfires and lengthening the fire season. [more]

A ‘megafire’ measuring 1.5 million acres forms in Australia as bushfires merge