Please spare a thought, send a thought and/or a prayer or what ever you are comfortable with to those in Australia. Especially all in the States of Victoria and South Australia. The temperatures there are up over 40 degreesC.
To make things worse there have been powercuts in Melbourne, and no doubt in other centres and towns. Not only electrically powered cooling devices not working, but people stuck in lifts (US Trans: elevators).
The bush fires are "away" and now joining up.
We may be great rivals at sport, but when "push comes to shove" the NZ and Aussie cousinship comes in to play. I don't doubt that we will be sending some of our specialist Rural firefighters over to help out, just as NZ and Aussie combined to send a team of firefighters over to help in California recently.
Only there is little we can do here to help relieve the incredible heat. And I was complaining to myself about Wellington's predicted high of 26 degreesC for Saturday, and temp not dropping below 18 overnight tonight.
Parts of Australia (and it is a HUGE country) have been hit with many years of drought, then severe flooding. While we get the same here and it is also disasterous for those affected, it is on a smaller scale.
So send a thought to EnZed's cousin, Australia. Yes, even with a cricket series involving the 2 nations starting on Sunday.
5 comments:
It's absolutely inappropriate and I've never heard the term before, but Rural firefighters triggers some really naughty fantasies... Nevertheless, I'll will enclose those heat tortured Aussies into my prayers. I still remember when an aunt came to visit us from Australia when I was a wee boy and she told how they had survived a fire under wet blankets in trench, while their farm went up in flames.
What is going on with the weather anymore. It seems all over the world there have been terrible heat waves, crazy cold fronts with ice storms, hurricanes... France just had unbelievable wind storms. It seems no where is safe from some kind of weather disaster.
Even though we are freezing cold and under tons of snow right now, I can feel for the people boiling in Australia. I can't stand the heat and then with no power there is no way to escape it.
-Dana
Dear Gomad - oh, I know. The Rural bods are all volunteers, i.e. have a day job too.
Dear Dana - while the extreme temps over in Aussie don't happen every year, they are common there. If only we could get an Aussie extreme heat wave to meet a US Ice storm. Extreme windiness is an ordinary "feature" of Wellington.
Mum and me find it difficult to comprehend exactly what's going on in Australia. Especially after the floods we've just had. It's bizarre. Just what is happening to our planet? We're in the South West of France and we've had -10 and -12 regularly in the mornings, previously unheard of. Last year in these parts the fruit failed because the late frosts 'burned' all the buds off. No plums, figs or cherries. It was devastating for the fruit farmers.
Hi Henry,
The hottest I've been in was 43 degrees C in Madrid back in August 1987. But it was a dry heat. The poor Aussies in the heat wave have to put up with high humidity too - yucky.
Yet daft sports people choose to run around in it, wacking a ball backwards and forwards with mesh paddles.
Luckily our cherry harvest has been good this Summer, only the credit munch makes cherries too expensive for me.
Hey - its now Sunday AND February over here!
Post a Comment