(Sydney) Particularly high temperatures, accompanied by a hot wind, were recorded on Tuesday on the eastern coast of Australia, raising fears of forest fires as devastating as during the summer of 2019-20.
In parts of New South Wales, temperatures reached up to 34°C, more than 10 degrees above the average for an austral spring.
Children from 21 schools in a coastal region 500 kilometers south of Sydney were sent home.
“A severe fire risk is expected in the area this afternoon due to strong winds,” the NSW Rural Fire Service said in a statement on Tuesday.
Last week, smoke linked to forest fires, lit as a preventative measure by firefighters before the fire season which promises to be intense, invaded the famous harbor of Sydney, Australia’s most populous city.
The spring heatwave sweeping eastern Australia follows the warmest winter on record since records began in 1910.
Experts expect Australia’s fire season to be its most intense since the “black summer” of 2019-2020, when huge, out-of-control fires raged across this part of the huge island. continent.
Since then, conditions have been unusually wet, which has helped make trees grow faster, increasing the amount of potential fuel to fuel fires.