The forecast may have been wrong in eastern sydney yesterday, but up the coast in Newcastle it was into the 40's at the beach in the afternoon. We didn't get the southerly till a lot later.
The southerly came through earlier than predicted for sydney, so unless NPWS make a call mid Sunday morning when it was apparent the temps weren't going to rise in that area, I don;t think they should be copping too much flak because the forecast didn't pan out in one area.
What I would like to see though is individual parks maybe looked at in terms of specific risk for the park. Take Glenrock, its not a big park by any means, bounded by ocean on one side and suburbia on the others. Its remote enough from other parks/bush that embers from another location are very unlikely to reach it creating spot fires and when it does get fires the nature of the topography and the number of exit points make it much less likely that it will be a catastrophic event.
If there was a westerly wind blowing, fire would be forced down hill, a direction that fire will be slower. If it is blowing N/E, its a see breeze so conditions are going to be significantly cooler reducing the risk of fire.
On a given day the risk in Glenrock would be significantly less than say, NP locally in the watagans or north of Newcastle, where the parks are expansive and adjoin State Forests and other scrub land.
When it is hot and dry, I wouldn't consider a ride at Killingworth, Awaba or any of the Watagans because of fire risk, Glenrock though has never concerned me.
So maybe rather than blanket state closures, there should be more of a regional approach. Yesterday the closure of Glenrock, no problems (too hot to ride anyway), but today there would be no reason for fire to flare up due to its disconnection to other bush. The watagan NP however, the areas are so vast as are the connections to other areas that there may be spot fires smouldering away ready to go that are undetected making the closures warranted today.
