According to media reports: "Three firefighters were hospitalised with severe burns and 20 properties estimated lost in a blaze south of Sydney."

Our local fire smoked up again today - they're kind of like volcanoes - spewing up smoke - threatening to erupt. No big wind here at least but another heatwave coming - in fact 'heatwave' is kind of the wrong way to talk about it - we've had a couple of 'normal-waves' where the temp is 29C for a couple of days but the rest is heatwave

Temperatures are setting daily records - in individual places as well as hottest ever days for Australia as a whole. In some ways the smoke impacting Sydney could be construed as a 'good thing' - there's a tendency to go about our air conditioned lives and hear about the climate emergency on the tv happening to someone else - but this is more in your face. You can literally taste it, smell it. Threatens your health.