Some 450 schools in Victoria are set to close on Friday. For Thursday, total fire bans have been issued in several districts.
Firefighters are already trying to contain blazes dotted across the states of Victoria and New South Wales.
BABY BATS
Millions of people across Australia’s two most populous states have been warned to remain on high alert, including in major cities Sydney and Melbourne.
Government forecaster Sarah Scully said a band of “extreme” heat had settled across the country.
“There’s also dry thunderstorms forecast across Victoria and southern New South Wales,” she said.
“Those dry thunderstorms have very little rainfall in them, but they can ignite new fires.”
Hundreds of baby bats died earlier this week as stifling temperatures hit the state of South Australia, a local wildlife group said.
The “Black Summer” bushfires raged across Australia’s eastern seaboard from late 2019 to early 2020, razing millions of hectares, destroying thousands of homes and blanketing cities in noxious smoke.
Australia’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.51°C since 1910, researchers have found, fuelling increasingly frequent extreme weather patterns over both land and sea.
Australia remains one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of gas and coal, two key fossil fuels that are blamed for global heating.