Noertheast QLD

Bushfire woes continue in QLD today. Here the focus being on the northeastern portion of the state, the coastal stretch being Townsville and Cairns, but fires continue across much of the state, with a house lost in Booyal, southwest of Bundaberg this morning

The image show the true colour MODIS from the Aqua satellite overpass around 1330 LT this afternoon. Cairns and Townsville are marked with a C and a T. An emergency evacuation at Mount Fox resulted from the fire near the '1', with approximately 20 houses being threatened. Also visible in the image, offshore, is the dust storm which affected much of the country yesterday. A more complete summary from earlier this afternoon can be found here.

Fire weather conditions remain bad, although conditions have moderated to some degree from the extremes of the past few days. Fire bans have been extended to early next week. It is not particularly hot, but it is very dry with moderate gusty winds, increasing the fire danger to high to very high levels. In Townsville this afternoon, RH dropped to around 5%. Fire dangers are expected to remain in the high to very high range throughout much of coastal QLD.