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Wednesday, Jan 9, 2013 9:45 AM UTC

Milder temperatures ease Australian wildfire fears

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Topics: From the Wires,

Milder temperatures ease Australian wildfire fearsIn this photo provided by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service plumes of smoke rises from a fire near Sussex Inlet, Australia, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2013. Firefighters are battling scores of wildfires in southeastern Australia as authorities evacuate national parks and warned that hot, dry and windy conditions were combining to raise the threat to its highest alert level. (AP Photo/NSW Rural Fire Service, HO) Editorial Use Only(Credit: Ho)

COOMA, Australia (AP) — Record temperatures across southern Australia cooled Wednesday, reducing the danger from scores of raging wildfires but likely bringing only a brief reprieve from the summer’s extreme heat and fire risk.

Australia had its hottest day on record Monday with a nationwide average of 40.33 degrees Celsius (104.59 degrees Fahrenheit), narrowly breaking a 1972 record of 40.17 C (104.31 F). Tuesday was the third hottest day at 40.11 C (104.20 F). Four of Australia’s hottest 10 days on record have been in 2013.

“There’s little doubt that this is a very, very extreme heat wave event,” said David Jones, manager of climate monitoring and prediction at the Bureau of Meteorology.

“If you look at its extent, its duration, its intensity, it is arguably the most significant in Australia’s history,” he added.

Cooler conditions brought relief to firefighters, who were battling around 200 fires across Australia’s southeast, and gave them the chance to build earth breaks to try to contain the blazes. The risk from fire was expected increase later in the week as temperatures again rise.

No deaths have been reported from the wildfires, although around 100 people haven’t been accounted for since last week when a blaze destroyed around 90 homes in the Tasmanian town of Dunalley, east of the state capital of Hobart. On Wednesday, police spokeswoman Lisa Stingel said it was likely most of those people simply haven’t checked in with officials.

“There are no reports of missing persons in circumstances that cause us to have grave fears for their safety at this time,” Tasmania Police Acting Commissioner Scott Tilyard said in a statement.

The fires have been most devastating in Tasmania, where at least 128 homes have been destroyed since Friday and more than 80,000 hectares (198,000 acres) burned. Hundreds of people remain at two evacuation centers in the state’s south.

“People have lost everything. We can’t comprehend that devastation unless we are in their shoes,” Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings said.

In Victoria state, north of Tasmania, a fire injured six people, destroyed nine homes and caused the evacuation of the farming community of Carngham west of the city of Ballarat, the Country Fire Authority said.

In New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, firefighters were battling 141 fires, including 31 that had not yet been contained. Fires burning out of control near the towns of Cooma, Yass and Shoalhaven were the most concerning.

Wildfires are common during the Australian summer. Fires in February 2009 killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes in Victoria.

Jones, the meteorologist, said the current heat wave conditions were a progression of the last four months of 2012, which were the hottest September-December period on record.

With Wednesday’s cool-down in southern Australia, the national capital, Canberra, dropped from a high of 36 C (97 F) on Tuesday to 28 C (82 F) and Sydney dropped from 43 C (109 F) to 23 C (73 F).

Jones expected that Wednesday would also rank among Australia’s hottest days when the national temperatures are calculated. That’s because the extreme heat has shifted from the heavier populated south to northern and central Australia.

The bureau forecast above average temperatures for the remainder of summer, compounding the fire danger created by a lack of rain across central and southern Australia over the past six months.

“It is going to be very challenging,” Jones said of the wildfire danger.

The U.S. government announced on Tuesday that 2012 had been the United States’ hottest year on record.

A brutal combination of a widespread drought linked to a La Nina weather event and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up 0.6 C (1.08 F) above the previous record set in 1998 to 12.96 C (55.32 F).

The same La Nina brought flooding rains to much of Australia in the cool first half of 2012. The second half was dry and hot, ending the year with a daily temperature 0.11 C (0.2 F) above the daily average of 21.81 C (71.26 F).

___

Associated Press writer Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.

More By Rod Mcguirk.

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