I haven't been keeping up with my PADing this week (posting, not taking), nor have I been keeping up with my regular gallery visits. In part this has been because of a busy period, but mostly because I have a few things to reply to which need more than a little casual thought.

I've made an exception tonight simply because I wanted to download the images that I took this afternoon to see what I ended up with. Although we have yet to reach the business end of the bushfire season, it hasn't stopped the occasional outbreak on a hot and windy day. Today was such a day. The temperatures were well into the 30s and wind gusts of 80 to 90 km/h were recorded at the airport and a few other places which made the use of waterbombing difficult.

At the moment there are over 100 fires burning across state, 40 of which are out of control. An unknown number of houses have been lost and up to 100 more are still at risk. There is no prospect of rain for at least three days. A cool southerly change is due to come through tonight but unfortunately this is "ironic" in the Alanis Morissette sense since all it will do is change the direction of many of the fire fronts and send them off in search of new fuel. The lower temperatures will be a blessing, the winds will not.

What you see here is a solid bank of not cloud, but smoke which is why the sun is still visible, albeit as a gruesome red orb. And you can't currently take a breath without smelling the smoke from the fires, even though the nearest one is some way from here, thankfully.

I took another shot just before I left Central which shows the edge of the smoke bank more clearly as it swept in from the fires in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney. A link to that image appears below.

Another View