Australia bushfires

Major bushfires in eastern Australia continued to rage in December. One town of 400 in New South Wales, Balmoral, was completely destroyed. Since the fires began in September 2019, at least 19 people had been killed as of press time, with 17 missing, and thousands of homes had burned as wildfires covered millions of acres of land.

The Australian bushfires coincided with a lack of rainfall and a record-setting heat wave that kept temperatures in eastern Australia over 100ºF for weeks.