Severe Weather Update: elevated fire dangers continue in northeast NSW & southern Qld, 13 Nov. 2019
13/11/2019
Meteorologist, Andrea Peace: Hello from the Bureau. Very High to Severe fire dangers continue over northeast New South Wales and southern Queensland today.
The southerly change has now moved through northern New South Wales and the Gold Coast, but other parts of southeastern Queensland today are going to experience temperatures and winds increasing ahead of the change, and the winds will make firefighting difficult.
At 10 am, the wind change extended through the Darling Downs and Granite Belt inland, with southwesterly winds there, but about the southeast the gusty southeasterly was pushing up the coast. Now we'll see those southeasterlies push up towards the Sunshine Coast this afternoon, but then as it continues to move north it will come up against this hot and strengthening northwesterly wind, so it's likely to stall as it reaches further north.
Now, a particular concern about the southeast today is if this southeasterly wind pushes into the Scenic Rim where there's currently fires going. The fires are currently experiencing southwesterly winds, but may experience a wind change once again if that southeasterly pushes through this afternoon.
If we have a look at the forecast for the humidity now, we can see that there's a real boundary between the dry southwesterly winds inland and the more moist, coastal southeasterly wind. This moisture will bring some short-lived relief on Thursday but as we move through Friday, we can see that the southwesterly winds will start to really dominate once again, pushing all of that dry air back to the coast.
We also expect to see maximum temperatures quickly return to 4 to 8 degrees above the November average on Friday and into the weekend. When we combine these with that dry air, we expect to see elevated fire dangers once again as we head towards the weekend.
Isolated showers and thunderstorms are possible over parts of eastern and southeastern Queensland from today, but there's very little rainfall expected and actually there's a real risk of dry lightning starting new fires.
So please, keep checking in to the Bureau and emergency service agencies, for the most up-to-date information.
