Hottest October day for Sydney as Australia battles bushfires, locusts

[link to story.news.yahoo.com]

Hottest October day for Sydney as Australia battles bushfires, locusts
Wed Oct 13, 1:03 PM ET Science - AFP
(Better late than never!) link to www.godlikeproductions.com] alt=''>

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia´s largest city sweltered through its hottest October day on record as authorities battled early spring bushfires and stockpiled pesticides to fight a heat-induced locust plague.

The mercury in Sydney hit 38.2 degrees Celsius (100.76 degrees Fahrenheit), which the New South Wales meteorology bureau said was highest temperature in the city since it began keeping records about 150 years ago.


Residents flocked to the city´s famous Bondi Beach to try to cool down.

Meanwhile about 25 bushfires raged in regional areas of New South Wales, forcing the evacuation of 50 people from houses near Nowra south of Sydney, fire service officials said.

New South Wales Rural Fire Service commissioner Phil Koperberg imposed a fire ban across much of the state and warned of a hectic bushfire season, even though summer does not officially begin for another six weeks.

He said dry conditions had created huge loads of fuel in an environment he described "the most bushfire-prone in the world".

"As a consequence, you are going to have fires," he said. "There is risk anywhere where there is a bushland interface."

Authorities were also stockpiling record levels of pesticides to try to control a plague of locusts hatched by the hot weather.

State Primary Industries Minister Ian MacDonald his department had received 2,000 reports of locust hatchings in the past week and the insects would devastate crops if they were not killed before they took wing in giant swarms.

"Unless those locusts are treated on the ground, they will develop into swarms and take to the air.

"This will make control operations extremely difficult, as locusts can travel up to 500 kilometres (310 miles) in a single day once they are on wing," he said.

Peace