SYDNEY, Australia — Wildfires surging across Australia’s drought-ravaged East Coast have left three people dead and destroyed more than 150 homes, officials said on Saturday, sounding the alarm for what is expected to be one of the country’s worst recorded fire seasons.

With summer heat waves still several weeks away, 1,500 firefighters were battling 70 fires across New South Wales, mostly north of Sydney, where massive clouds of smoke drifted east, turning skies orange. The smoke clouds were large enough to create their own weather systems, experts said.

Officials said it was unprecedented to see so many fires so out of control this early in spring.

“The consequences are absolutely apparent and evident over the last few weeks and particularly highlighted in the last 24 hours,” said Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service. “We have got the worst of our fire season still ahead of us. We’re not even in summer yet.”