Bushfires in Victoria are expected to continue, and a fire ban is in place as temperatures rise and winds gain speed
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00:00As we stand right now, that strong and gusty westerly change has moved through Mount Gambier,
00:07Narracourt, up towards Lamaroo, and it's just starting to cross the Victorian South Australia
00:12border as we speak.
00:14So it'll continue to move quickly eastwards.
00:16I think Portland's also just gone round to that strong and gusty westerly as well.
00:21So we're likely to see that start moving into western parts of Victoria in the coming hours.
00:25And as I've been talking about, probably approach the Grampians area as we get into that mid
00:29afternoon and possibly into the late afternoon hours, so within the next few hours as well.
00:34But ahead of that, these strong and gusty northerly winds are continuing to come down
00:38from the north.
00:39We've seen winds gusting to 70 kilometres an hour around Ballarat.
00:42We've also had some of our mountainous areas gust around 70 to 80 kilometres an hour.
00:46Over the fire zone area, still 50s and 60s, but we could see that pick up, and we will
00:50see that pick up in the coming hours as well.
00:53Temperatures also mostly in the mid to high 30s, a fair bit of cloud cover across much
00:58of western and southern parts of Victoria.
01:01That's keeping a lid on temperatures getting into the high 30s to low 40s, but it is still
01:05hot, it is still windy, and we've got that westerly change coming in the next few hours.
01:09Right now, those strong and gusty northerly winds, the fires are travelling to the south
01:13and spotting further south.
01:15But when that westerly change hits any ongoing fires, and particularly around the Big Fire
01:19and the Grampians, that means the winds are going to come from the west, so that means
01:23the fire will then very quickly travel from going south to then start moving eastwards.
01:27So if you're anywhere east of any of the fire zones right now, you could start becoming
01:32impacted as we move into the late afternoon and early evening hours, as that strong westerly
01:37change starts pushing the fire to the east rather than the south in the northerlies.
01:41And that's what we're most concerned, those few hours either side of the change, and that
01:45change could contain wind gusts in excess of 90 kilometres an hour as well.
01:49There's obviously, we've seen it stop recording, I think it's about 1 or 1.30 in the morning.
01:53We saw those temperatures in those last few obs go from around the low 20s into the mid-30s.
01:59Now from, I'm not fully across exactly what has happened, I think one of the NBN towers
02:04are providing power to that observation, might have gone down around that time, cannot confirm
02:09that of course.
02:10But there's obviously a lot of fire activity going on in and around that as well, so that
02:14possibly could be it as well.
02:16But no, we do look at many observations, that is one.
02:19We do have the portable weather stations that are located right across parts of the
02:23Grampians, as well as a huge observation network using radar, satellite and wind data.
02:28And we look at all of that to track the changes and also track the winds that are coming.
02:32We'll continue to keep updated on that, we've got a whole team focusing on it with our fire
02:35weather team, and we've got meteorologists embedded with our emergency services here
02:39in Victoria.
02:40We're still getting fresh and gusty west to south westerly winds there, so that's likely
02:44going to take a while to calm down later this afternoon and this evening.
02:47And that westerly change, as I mentioned earlier, has also moved through many of our
02:50western areas, sorry, eastern areas of South Australia, south of around the Renmark area,
02:56so those winds are going to stay up for the next few hours.
02:59So if any fires do get going in eastern parts of South Australia, that's going to be a concern
03:03because they will race towards the east with these strong and gusty westerly winds.
03:07So even though temperatures have cooled down, we're now seeing those really strong winds
03:10there and they're likely to continue until the mid and late afternoon timeframe.