Fires in NSW caused by delayed monsoons in India, experts say

NSW's fire boss said the state had never seen anything like it before. 

The fire front in NSW's Willi Willi National Park, as seen from space.

And, a weather system thousands of kilometres away is at least partly responsible, experts say.

NSW's bushfire emergency began on Friday morning and escalated quickly — at its peak the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) issued emergency warnings for 17 separate blazes.

Although emergency services were bracing for an intense fire season — which started earlier than predicted — a bushfire expert says climate change had created the "fairly extraordinary circumstances" seen this week.

Trent Penman is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne who studies the behaviour and formation of bushfires using real depictions of fuel, weather and topography.

He said the bushfires could be partly explained by monsoon season ending late in India.

Read the story from ABC News by Kevin Nguyen - “Fires in NSW caused by delayed monsoons in India, experts say.”