Winds are turning hot, dry, gusty northerly in South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales, causing fire danger to increase. Recent dry weather is combining with the hot, dry gusty winds to raise fire danger to the 'severe' category across much of the mainland, even extreme in a few places in the next day or two. The highest fire danger is likely to be over inland areas where it will be hotter and drier and where there has been little rain lately. In general, fire danger should not reach the levels of a week-and-a-half ago due to there being less heat and wind, but people should still be prepared and vigilant. Fire bans have been issued due to the prospect of temperatures reaching well into the thirties, winds gusting to 50-to-70km/h and humidity dropping below 10 percent in areas that have had less than half the normal rainfall so far this spring. On Wednesday Nullarbor reached 40 degrees, had humidity drop to six percent and winds gusting to 63km/h, leading to a fire danger rating well into the ‘extreme’ category. Fire danger will peak on Thursday in SA, Tasmania and western and central Victoria and on Friday in eastern Victoria and southern NSW just ahead of a cooler change. The cooler change looks like being a fairly gusty and dry one, only generating patchy light rain.