Fire Weather (continued)

All of the above fire weather activities were reported in various issues of Weather News from August 1957 to June 1962 when issue No 71 reported a conference on fire-control research at Launceston in May 1962 followed later in the same month by the seventh biennial conference of fire control officers at Scottsdale. The research conference was chaired by Dr A. R. King of the CSIRO Division of Physical Chemistry and the operations conference by Harry Luke of the NSW Forestry Department.

The Bureau was represented at both conferences by Steve Lloyd from Central Office, Herbie Whittingham from the Brisbane Divisional Office and Ray Wyatt from the Hobart Divisional Office. Herbie Whittingham had carried out important fire weather investigations in Brisbane. Gwynne Wilson had been transferred from the Fire Weather Section of Central Office to the Defence Investigation Section and was involved in providing meteorological advice for minor trials of atomic weapons at Maralinga and high level flights of Hibal balloons at Mildura.

The fire weather services provided by the Bureau had made steady progress from 1956 to 1962 as the result of the work of the fire weather meteorologists in Central and Divisional Offices which, in addition to the routine provision of fire weather forecasts and warnings, saw some valuable contributions to the knowledge of meteorological aspects of the outbreak and spread of bushfires.

Bureau of Meteorology