When the forecasts for this week started to roll in, my mind immediately drifted back to Australia’s black summer.

I had taken my daughters down to the pool in our estate in western Sydney, hoping for a brief reprieve from the relentless heat. The Gospers Mountain fire was raging in the Blue Mountains, but on that particular day the smoke didn’t seem too bad.

We were in the water for no more than five minutes when ash started falling from the sky. The delicate black flakes landed gently on top of the heads of my young children, a poetically quiet omen for their future.

Fast forward six years and south-eastern Australia is in the grips of another heatwave – the worst since 2019-2020. Both Melbourne and western Sydney will reach temperatures in the low 40s, towns in regional Victoria and New South Wales even higher. Canberra – where I live now – is experiencing consecutive days in the high 30s.

Heatwave conditions are severe to extreme for large swathes of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT until Saturday. From Friday, strong winds associated with a cold front will push across Victoria and New South Wales, an exceptionally dangerous set-up for fire weather, reminiscent of the 2009 black Saturday fires.

Mercifully, some of the conditions leading up to this heatwave aren’t as........

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