On her last day in Australia this spring after a visit to address firefighting conferences in the Blue Mountains and Tasmania, American wildfire expert Alexandra Syphard smelled a hint of smoke in the air and recalls feeling a deep sense of foreboding.

She had just seen how dense and dry Australia’s eucalyptus forests had become. “I thought the potential for a terrible fire season was scary,” she says.

The Cobargo main street a day after fire ripped through in December. Credit:James Brickwood

Dr Syphard, who is chief scientist at Sage Underwriters, is one of many fire experts who has studied the two terrible fire seasons California suffered in 2016 and 2017. Though their work has not yet produced significant fire and land management policy changes - those are still to come - she believes some of the lessons of California will resonate in Australia.

Late last year, Ken Pimlott, the former chief of California's lead firefighting agency, Cal Fire, described the conflagrations in both Australia and the US "the future fires" - a dangerous new phenomenon born of a hotter, drier, windier climate.