Recognising the Ancient Skill of Cultural Burning

The bushfire crisis that occurred in southern NSW and eastern Victoria in the summer of 2019-2020 was completely unprecedented. In a few days in early January we saw a sequence of events that were truly extraordinary: clusters of fire thunderstorms. Prior to this time, pyro-cumulonimbus (pyroCb) events were quite rare.¹ There had, for example, only ever been one previous fire thunderstorm in Tasmania that we know of - in 2013.² When a pyroCb event occurs the weather, the fire, the atmosphere and the land all become coupled and the situation goes completely out of control - just like in an atomic explosion.