By Paul Homewood
We now have full annual weather data from the Australian BOM for last year, so we can update matters.
First of all, a couple of useful charts from the Telegraph. The first shows the distribution of fires, which seem to be mainly clustered along the coast in NSW and in northern Queensland:
The second chart compares the number of fatalities and hectares with historical fires.
What is immediately apparent is that death tolls were regularly much greater in the past. The current death toll, we are told, is 18.
Whilst this crop of fires seems to have affected a greater area, we cannot be certain that previous fires, particularly pre war, were accurately measured. Presumably many outback ones were just ignored and left to burn.
According to the Telegraph, the current fires have affected 5.9m hectares, or 59,000 km2. While they claim this is three times…
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