A Blazing Sunset

The warmer than average weather continues in Sydney and beyond. Without doubt, this false summer is good for the growth of sub-tropical trees: our ten-day-old banana bunch is developing quickly, the juvenile jackfruits continue to enlarge underneath their covers and our small crop of starfruits is ripening. The warm spell is even assisting the early growth of winter vegetables such as snow peas, sugar snap peas and yao mak.

Some young celtuce (wo sun) plants ready for planting out

Unfortunately, however, this presents dangers. The continuing plant growth, accompanied by consistent falls of rain, has seen a hazardous growth of grasses and understory shrubs, and a build-up of leaf litter, in our city’s surrounding bushland areas. With favourable, windless weather conditions over the weekend, the Rural Fire Service took advantage of this in preparation for bushfires later in the year. Controlled burning by our bushfire fighters will help to prevent disasters in the hotter days of spring from September onwards.

The hazard-reduction burning took place in twenty locations, mainly in the Blue Mountains region, west of Sydney, from Friday onwards.

As a consequence of the burnings, for three days, from Saturday to Monday, our city has been blanketed by a grey pall of smoke, some suburban areas, especially those in the west, being more affected than others. This was partly improved yesterday (Monday) when the heavens granted us some relieving, drizzling rain, removing some of the smoke particles from the atmosphere.

Nevertheless, coupled with the remaining rain clouds, there was ample smoke in the atmosphere last night to facilitate a spectacular display of celestial colour on sunset... The smoke particles enhanced the red end of the light spectrum.

Two images of the stunning sunset taken from our front door...