The Weather That Changed Us

[mike carey]

Almost five years ago, on 30 December 2019, a NSW Rural Fire Service truck being used fighting a fire near the Victorian border went to drive through what the driver thought was a simple wall of flames. There was no 'other side'. Instead, it was a fire storm that overturned the 10-tonne truck and killed Sam McPaul, a young volunteer firefighter whose wife was expecting their third child. What had killed him was a manifestation of fire-generated weather, a phenomenon the extremes of which, fire tornados, had first been observed in the massive 2003 Canberra fires that had destroyed 500 homes and killed four people.

This Canberra event was one of several weather events that had been game changers, in what they represented, the science involved or the way in which emergency responses were organised. They are the basis of a new ABC podcast series The Weather That Changed Us. The ABC is also broadcasting them, and the Canberra episode, and specifically a description told by the driver of that truck almost 17 years later was what I woke up to on the radio this Sunday morning.

There are six episodes of the podcast, with links from this page (there are links to another podcast series below these six):

The Weather That Changed Us with Tyne Logan - ABC listen

WWW.ABC.NET.AU

---

Australia experiences all kinds of extreme weather from cyclones and fires to floods and heat. For those who lived...

Nate Byrne is the breakfast weather announcer on ABC News TV, and something of a science geek. Here he is with a short video on fire tornados produced by the Bureau of Meteorology:

And yes, that's his usual energy level as an announcer.

And a news piece about the anniversary of that 2019 event:

Five years on, honouring the fallen volunteer firefighters after Black Summer | About Regional

ABOUTREGIONAL.COM.AU

---

A memorial and pin oak-lined avenue of honour on a stretch of road that follows the Murray River, near Jingellic,…