This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor. To New South Wales, to Jeremy

Zachus. It is El Nino Year. It is summertime in the Australian continent. However, meteorologists have been

warning us, advising us since the lead up, the early spring that the weather is unpredictable.

Now the word severe has been added to unpredictable.

This is a continent.

I have to get used to it because I've never been there.

So there are large pieces of this story. It's not all one.

Like you could speak of New England as having a uniform weather as the snowstorms or the rainstorms moved through or the hurricanes move up the coast.

Uniform that is not true in Australia.

Jeremy Zakas in New South Wales we begin with the unpredictableness of weather. We'll start in

Western Australia. Jeremy last week I spoke to my friend Gregory Coppley who's

visiting in Perth, he's from Perth and he's used to Perthian temperatures.

I've never known Gregory to comment on his many visits to Perth and his family.

He commented this time, I was talking to him early morning

East Coast time, which is the evening in Perth, and Gregory reported 41 degrees centigrade at 9 o'clock at night.

You send me a map that shows that all of Western Australia is on fire.

Is this unusual on fire or summertime fire? Good evening to

you Jeremy. Gidde John, yes well I can tell you this while the on fire that is

relatively normal in the summertime it is unusually

hot on fire I guess you could say this time around so when when Gregory told you

that it was 41 degrees at 9 p.m. at night we do get that from time to time in Western Australia. It's not so bad, but it is very

rare. It happens maybe one or two days out of the summer. But the problem is, John, what you didn't get from

...