Victoria set for low-risk bushfire season after heavy rains but grass growth worries firefighters
The dark clouds that dumped six months of rainfall across Victoria in just a few weeks have a silver lining: emergency authorities are tipping a below-average bushfire season for much of the state.
The rain will keep Victoria’s forests damp. But it has also resulted in thick grass covering the state, and fire crews are watching for that to dry in summer when it could feed nasty and fast-moving grass fires.
A firefighting helicopter tackling a bushfire near Bairnsdale in Victoria’s East Gippsland in December 2019.Credit:Victorian government/AAP
“It will get hot. There will be fires,” Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said last week. “We need to be ready.”
Victoria received double its average rainfall over the last three months. The northern plains, a region stretching from Swan Hill to Wodonga near the border with NSW, had its wettest spring on record.
Higher-than-average rainfall combined with lower-than-usual temperatures will continue through December before the weather starts to revert to a more typical summer pattern of heatwaves and thunderstorms.
Because of the forecast and the amount of moisture in the ground, the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council’s seasonal bushfire outlook, released last week, predicts below-average fire risk across Victoria’s north and east.
“We’re starting from very wet conditions. But a drying trend as we head more into summer, with some lower-intensity heatwaves,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s senior meteorologist, Kevin Parkin, said. “We’d certainly expect some fire activity.”
Ben McGowan remembers cradling his newborn daughter in his arms as the countryside around his Indigo Valley home filled with dark, choking smoke in 2019.
He said the anxiety has never gone away.
But this year, after watching his property in Victoria’s north-east being drenched with rain for months, he’s less worried.
Ben McGowan on his Indigo Valley property.
“We’ve had two very wet years, so there’s a lot of material around, but it’s nowhere near as dry and the weather is much milder through to January,” said McGowan.
While the risk appears low, he said the community remains on alert.
The soil is fertile ground for grass, which has started to sprout up across the state in paddocks and plains and along the edges of roadsides. And the heavy rain has hampered authorities’ efforts to slash it back.
“The weather will get warmer, the rain will stop, and those grasses will cure,” said CFA chief officer Jason Heffernan.
Long grass was already starting to dry out in north-west Victoria, where the fire risk has risen.
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