Digital Media Blog 01/23/2020

Digital Media Blog
01/23/2020
Update of Australia fire

According to CNN, the southeastern of Australia, where Canberra is located has been battered by severe weather for the past week. Canberra was hit by a hailstorm on Monday, with hailstones the size of golf balls shattering car windows and injuring scores of birds. There have also been heavy winds all week apart from exacerbating the persistent and widespread fires, the wind created apocalyptic scenes of massive dust storms engulfing towns last Sunday. Australia has been gripped by a devastating drought since 2017 which has not only destroyed livelihoods but has left the land parched and dry, full of loose soil and dust that are easily whipped up into the air by wind. In normal conditions, dust storms are not common occurrences. But because of the drought and wind, they are happening more and more frequently in Australia. The major city of Melbourne, south of Canberra in the state of Victoria, was hit with a dust storm on Wednesday night and then rain on Thursday, creating a whole new kind of weather disaster. The dust had been spread in the air by the wind -- so when the rain came, it combined into a rust-colored sludge of mud that coated the city. Photographs from Melbourne show the Yarra River turned completely brown with the dust-mud, and cars covered with dirt. People woke up to see their household pools and birdbaths filled with brown dusty water. The Australian Open, now in its fourth day, even had to delay matches for several hours because the outdoor courts were covered with mud. Staff at the tennis tournament rushed to clean the court with towels, hoses, and "high pressure cleaning," finally opening it back up to matches in the late afternoon. There are "damaging winds" across much of the state on Thursday, with the strongest wind gust reaching 85 miles per hour in a national park northeast of Melbourne, according to the Victoria Bureau of Meteorology. Milder winds are forecast for Friday and across the weekend.


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