Fire Weather (continued)

A significant development reported in Weather News No 13 of August 1957 was the transfer of the responsibility of the Minister for Agriculture in South Australia for the imposition of prohibition of lighting of fires under the Bush Fires Act to the forecasting staff of the Adelaide Divisional Office. This enabled radio stations to broadcast the prohibition on the lighting of fires at the same time as the fire weather warning, thus saving time and avoiding confusion.

In July 1958 the Bureau convened a fire weather conference in Melbourne with participants including fire research and fire control officers from all State Forestry Departments, some rural fire authorities, several private forestry companies and the CSIRO Divisions of Meteorological Physics and Industrial Chemistry. Bureau participants were W. J. Gibbs (Chairman), J. N. McRae and G. U. Wilson from Central Office, H. E. Whittingham from Brisbane, A. G. Robin from Sydney and A. J. Shields from Tasmania.

The purpose of the conference was to examine a number of Bureau project reports dealing with the case histories of specific fires and others dealing with the general question of meteorological factors influencing the outbreak and spread of bushfires. Copies of the project reports were circulated before the conference to all participants.

The conference produced some stimulating exchanges of ideas between participants from the Bureau and the other authorities. One advantage of discussing both operational and research aspects of fire weather was that researchers and practitioners became better acquainted with the other's field of interest and sometimes the practitioners made a contribution to research ideas and at other times heard suggestions from researchers for improving operational procedures.

Bureau of Meteorology