New Zealand Mountain Tops Have Turned Brown From Australian Bushfires

Bushfires in Australia have been spewing out an incredible amount of smoke over the past few months.

It's choked people hundreds of kilometres away and caused many to rush to hardware stores to buy face masks.

But incredibly, snowy areas in New Zealand, which are thousands of kilometres away, have been turned brown thanks to the same smoke. It's unbelievable to know that the smoke has crossed the Tasman and led to places near Franz Josef Glacier and the Tasman Glacier to be affected.

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Rey, an Aussie living in Wellington, has posted photos of the 'caramelised' snow in the Westland District in New Zealand.

A few days ago these peaks were a beautiful, snowy white colour and now they're like this.

There's no knowing what kind of damage that could do to the local area and whether it will impact how the snow stays on the mountain tops.

Met Service forecaster Cameron Coutts said: "The last couple of days the fires in Australia have picked up in their intensity and produced a significant amount of smoke.

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"Most of it is at high levels once it reaches New Zealand. There is the odd report of people being able to smell smoke, but it is not really affecting us at ground level at the moment, even though it is quite thick."

But if you thought the smoke was bad there, spare a thought for people in Australia's capital.

On New Year's Day, readings at one station in the Australian Capital Territory registered an air quality index reading of a whopping 4,650. For some perspective, when the AQI goes above 200, it's considered hazardous.

The reading at Monash was well above other cities competing for the world's world air quality, with places like Delhi and Kolkata only in the 400s. Elsewhere in the ACT, Civic registered 3,436 and it was 3,508 at Florey.

Bureau Of Meteorology

ACT acting chief health officer Dr Paul Dugdale said they registered readings that have never been seen in the capital.

"It is in the highest range that we go up to...and in fact it was out of range overnight on one of our smoke detectors," he said.

"It went off the scale on the small particles. It's certainly extremely smoky as anyone can see looking outside."

Off. The. Goddamn. Scale.

The Canberra Times reports that the previously highest recorded AQI in Canberra in the last seven years was 1,420 - so we really are in uncharted territory.

Topics: News, Bushfires, Interesting, Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie