'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres

Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by billfruit on Friday January 10, 2020 @02:35PM (#22014507)

I'm curious at the use of acres in this article, or even otherwise. This is about 6070 km square kilometers, which is a square of about 77 kilometer.

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Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by KuhlMensch on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:24PM (#22015704)

A nice series of visualisations for those looking for more context

https://graphics.reuters.com/AUSTRALIA-BUSHFIRES-SCALE/0100B...

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Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by gerdesj on Friday January 10, 2020 @06:09PM (#22016601)

You'll need this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-conv...

I suspect that acres were chosen because it is a reasonably familiar unit, given the organ is NPR, and makes for a huge number. If you are aware of an acre, you will know it is a fair sized bit of land and 1.5M of them is absolutely huge.

For us European types (lol - UK) 0.3 Wales or 0.2 Belgiums gives an idea as to absolutely awful these fires are.

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Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by mrb on Friday January 10, 2020 @02:52PM (#22014679)

Here is what a 6070 km² square looks like: https://i.imgur.com/kEFBxZg.jpg

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Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by ddevault on Friday January 10, 2020 @03:58PM (#22015467)

About two Rhode Islands, or one Delaware.

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Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by polemic on Friday January 10, 2020 @02:42PM (#22014575)

Wikipedia says Brighton is 82.79 km2. So this is about 70x larger.

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Re:'Megafire' in Australia Engulfs 1.5M Acres by forwhomst on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:31PM (#22015773)

Nobody in NPR's audience knows how big a kilometer or square km is.

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