 Welcome to the October 2019 seasonal outlook. I'm Sarah Harris, Manager of Research and Development in the bushfire team. So we're going to start the presentation today with the Australia seasonal bushfire outlook. This was collaboratively developed between the bushfire Natural Hazard CRC, AFAC, the Bureau of Meteorology and fire agencies from across Australia. As you can see, parts of Australia can expect above normal fire potential, parts of East Australia, and we've already seen this play out with fires in southern Queensland and New South Wales. For Victoria, above average fire season is expected in eastern parts of the state, particularly East Gippsland. Now this outlook was put together in August. We will collaboratively assess this at the end of the month and potentially update depending on the conditions we experience and any changes in the outlook. Now I'll go through some of the conditions we have already experienced and then what is being predicted. I'll start with the broader Australian context. So what we've got here are rainfall and temperature desol maps. These maps are how rainfall and temperature compare to the historical record for that particular period. On the left, upper left, we've got the 36 month rainfall desol. So the last three years and then on the top right year to date. And the bottom we've got the 12 month max temperature and the bottom right is the 12 month minimum. What we're seeing is rainfall deficiencies have affected most of New South Wales and Queensland and southern parts of the Murray-Darling Basin since the start of 2017. Western Australia is also experiencing rainfall deficiency in southwest coastal areas. So unless conditions ease, there is high potential for further requests of Victorian firefighters and IMT staff. Focusing in on Victoria and more recent rainfall, we have one month, three months and six month desol maps. So essentially September and extending back over the last six months was generally below average in East Gippsland and north of the divide compared to the long term average. Rainfall in west and central Gippsland in recent months has been average to above average. Now this is the current root zone soil moisture map for Victoria. This data can inform us about dryness and life foliage at a landscape scale. Ground indicates dry soils and blue indicates wetter soils. See in summary, as you can see in eastern Victoria has now experienced three consecutive years of below average rainfall during autumn and winter. And as a result, dieback of trees in eastern Victoria has been observed. We've seen that pastures in southwestern Victoria are currently experiencing above average rates due to average and above average soil moisture conditions. And far northwest is experiencing extremely low growth. We can also take a closer look at soil moisture conditions at individual points across the landscape. So this slide shows examples of root zone soil moisture for Bensdale at the top, Bendigo in the middle and Hamilton down the bottom. The trends highlight that parts of East Gippsland have had low level root zone soil moisture for much of 2019 and that's even extended back to the winter of 2017. So this slightly translates to an increased dead fuel component, dryness of life foliage in the near surface and as well as elevated fuels. Whereas for Bendigo, at the start of the year we had below average conditions, but that's now moved into average conditions and Hamilton's a bit more variable but similar that it was slightly below average but more average and even above average soil moisture. So to explain some of our recent conditions and also what might be coming up, can refer to climate drivers. The primary climate drivers of Australia are El Nino Southern Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode and the Indian Ocean Dipole. And I've put these plots in to show that how these climate drivers influence our fire weather across Australia during spring. So the bigger the purple box, the bigger the influence. And as you can see, all of these climate drivers do have an influence in Victoria's fire weather. At the moment, we've got neutral conditions for ENSO, so that's not having an influence. But we do have a positive IOD and that typically leads to warmer and dry conditions in parts of Australia. And that's likely to persist and then decay in early summer. We also are seeing a negative SAM occurring. That has a complex influence on Australia's fire weather and it has a bigger role in what we're seeing in New South Wales. But as you can see, it does have an impact on Victoria's weather as well and contributes to that drier and warmer conditions. So moving to what is being projected for coming months, the Bureau of Meteorology Outlook is suggesting warmer than average conditions are likely across most of Victoria, with some average conditions along the south coast. And that's for the rest of the year. Rainfall is very likely to be below average for the remainder of 2019. And this is somewhat concerning because the climate conditions of spring typically defines what the severity of the bush fire season will be like as it's a key role in determining the landscape conditions for flammability during summer. All right, I'll finish up by comparing our current rainfall to previous fire seasons. This graph tracks Victoria's cumulative monthly rainfall anomalies, where an anomaly is the departure of rainfall from historical average values. It helps provide an indicator of the fire season severity over the last 30 years. So this season, we follow the black line and we follow this trend between what has previously been found to be a severe grass fire season, which is in the orange dash line, and a severe forest fire season, which is the dashed green line. For this coming season, there is forecast continued dry conditions for all of Victoria. This will result in further moisture stress in forest vegetation. So it's likely we're going to follow more closely to what has previously been a severe forest fire season. Note that this is average for Victoria, so there's considerable variability regionally. As mentioned, climate conditions during spring typically defines the severity of the bush fire season as it plays a key role in determining landscape flammability for the summer. Based on recent and predicted conditions, the implications may be above normal early bush fire activity is likely in East Gippsland, even starting in October and possibly in the Malley Heath due to continuing severe dryness. With the North East region continuing to experience dry conditions, this may lead to bush fire activity starting from November. While there are some areas that have experienced average to above average rainfall, particularly Southwest and Central areas, these may rapidly dry as we head into summer based on the three month outlook of below average rainfall. Insufficient spring rain means higher chance of significant campaign fire activity over summer, similar to last season. And finally, with New South Wales and Queensland still experiencing drought conditions with elevated fire risk for the season. This will limit our ability to request or provide assistance from interstate. That's all for this month. Thank you. And if you have any suggestions for improving these presentations or have questions, please email us at this address. Thank you.