Western Australia in ‘extreme’ heat wave, raising bush fire risk

Parts of Western Australia were gripped on Saturday by an “extreme” heat-wave, raising the risk of bush fires in the vast state, the nation’s weather forecaster said.
The Bureau of Meteorology had an “extreme heat-wave warning” in place on Saturday for the remote Pilbara and Gascoyne areas of Australia’s largest state, warning temperatures there could hit high forties degrees Celsius over the weekend.
In the Pilbara mining town of Paraburdoo, about 1,500 km north of the state capital Perth, a maximum temperature of 47 degrees Celsius was forecast on Saturday, more than six degrees above the average January maximum, according to forecaster data. It was 42.7 C there at 11:00 a.m.
Australia’s highest temperature on record of 50.7 C was logged at the Pilbara’s Onslow Airport on Jan. 13, 2022.
Saturday’s hot weather lifts the risk of bush fires in an already high-risk fire season amid an El Nino weather pattern, which is typically associated with extreme events such as wildfires, cyclones and droughts.