56 Active Fires In Tasmania, Usually Nation's Coolest Spot; Rivers Drying Up, Grid Straining

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A wildfire in Tasmania. The southern Australian island, usually a summer retreat for residents of the country’s Gold Coast, had 56 active wildfires as of Friday.

SYDNEY, Australia — At a dried-up waterhole in Australia’s far north, wild horses were found dead or dying. In cities in the southeast, power outages darkened traffic lights and shopping malls, and office workers and commuters were left exhausted and wilted.

On the island of Tasmania, more than 50 wildfires were burning, and farmers were bracing for more. And in Elizabeth North, a town north of Adelaide, the Red Lion Hotel promised free beer if the temperature reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) — and then had to deliver. “I got three marriage proposals, the problem was all of them were dudes over 60 years old,” said Stephen Firth, the pub’s manager.

Australia — again — is in the midst of one of its hottest summers on record. In the southeast, where most people live, aging coal-powered plants struggled to cope with demand on Friday, with more than 160,000 households temporarily losing power. In Melbourne, tram routes were cut back to save power, public swimming pools were overwhelmed and people who could get to air conditioning did so.

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Almost all of Australia’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, according to the government’s Bureau of Meteorology. The bureau says rainfall has been decreasing in the south and that there have been longer and more frequent marine heat waves. “There has been a long-term increase in extreme fire weather, and in the length of the fire season, across large parts of Australia,” the bureau said in a recent report. Australia’s heat waves, now an annual ordeal, have been expanding into areas that hadn’t normally experienced them before, said David Rissik, deputy director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/world/australia/heat-wave-horses.html