A year ago the Hunter was tinderbox waiting to explode.
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But as much of the state went up in flames, the Hunter was mostly spared except for a few notable outbreaks.
While the physical and mental scars of last summer's fires remain, the outlook for the coming season is significantly improved.
The region has a green tinge and months of steady rain has almost doubled the region's water storages.
At the same time a La Nina climate pattern, associated with above average rainfall, is developing in the Pacific Ocean.
"The good news is the chance of getting the weather that causes extreme bushfires is about half during a La Nina," University of Newcastle hydro climatologist Danielle Verdon-Kidd said.
But unlike dry spells of decades past, the most recent drought brought more hotter than average days and extreme temperatures.
Maximum temperature records for January 2020 were eclipsed at a host of Hunter weather stations, including Tocal and Williamtown.
It followed a pattern of record temperatures set in winter 2019, the hottest year on record.
It is this trend that worries Dr Verdon-Kidd the most when it comes to the upcoming fire season.
"We are seeing more frequent heat waves; that's one of the conditions that will result in fire weather," she said.
"Once you get combustion it moves really quickly. Bushfires are not dependent on just one variable, it's not just being dry or not just being hot, things have to align. So you have got the dry area, the dry vegetation, high temperature, high winds, lower relative humidity - all of those come together to create this perfect storm for bushfires to occur, which is what we saw over the Christmas period.
"At the moment the climate isn't looking like it will be like that this summer but nothing is ever a certainty and with climate change we are seeing what we have observed in the past may not play out in exactly the same way in the future."
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The report from the NSW Bushfire Inquiry, handed down this week, noted the role that climate change played in last year's fire season.
"Climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions clearly played a role in the conditions that led up to the fires and in the unrelenting conditions that supported the fires to spread, but climate change does not explain everything."
The report contained several recommendations about increasing fuel-reduction burns, but also noted "fuel loads were on average no higher than they have been for the past 30 years".
Former NSW Fire and Rescue Commissioner and Climate Council representative Greg Mullins described last year's conditions as the worst he had seen in almost 50 years.
"I saw flames running over mown grass. On days of catastrophic and extreme fire danger, hazard reduction makes no difference at all," he said.
While fuel loads across the Hunter were relatively green, Dr Verdon-Kidd said they still had the potential to combust in the right conditions.
"Because we only had a few small fires in our region (last year) we aren't in a situation where it has already been burnt and therefore unlikely to reburn this year," she said.
We do have that fuel load there, so if the conditions align and we get a really windy day there still is that chance. But the good news is that actual vegetation isn't near as dry and the water in the leaves and soil isn't as bad as this time last year."
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