October: Discharge
Discharge: a surge of electrostatic charge, built up within a cloud, is discharged as lightning.
On October 26th 2019 a lightning strike ignited a tree in the forest on Gosper’s Mountain, resulting in a megablaze that burned through 531 hectares, over 2.5 months. The fire started from a single ignition point.
The discharge point was in a remote section of the park, only accessible on foot, yet only 250 km from Sydney.
12 months later the first area to be burned, to the south east of this point was revisited, On the other side of the fire-impacted territory, in an impossible mission to view Gospers Mountain. The drone battery was never going to make it anywhere close enough to see the mountain, even in the distance.
View of the first-burned.
Along the higher-rainfall, more temperate eastern aspect the early days of the megafire didnt burn as hot. The epicormic recovery of the trees is significantly more advanced here compared to the hotter burned terrain.
