Black Saturday

Black Saturday may refer to:

Black Saturday bushfires

The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that ignited or were burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009 and were Australia's all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire-weather conditions and resulted in Australia's highest ever loss of life from a bushfire; 173 people died and 414 were injured as a result of the fires.

As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on 7 February. Following the events of 7 February 2009 and its aftermath, that day has become widely referred to as Black Saturday.

Background

A week before the fires, an exceptional heatwave affected southeastern Australia. From 28–30 January, Melbourne broke records by sweltering through three consecutive days above 43 °C (109 °F), with the temperature peaking at 45.1 °C (113.2 °F) on 30 January, the third hottest day in the city's history.

The heatwave was caused by a slow moving high-pressure system that settled over the Tasman Sea, with a combination of an intense tropical low located off the North West Australian coast and a monsoon trough over northern Australia, which produced ideal conditions for hot tropical air to be directed down over southeastern Australia.

Black Saturday (France)

Black Saturday refers, in France, to the day of the year when road traffic is most dense due to the many departures on holiday. (Traffic problems are exacerbated by France's extreme centralisation, with Paris being the hub of the entire national highway network.) This Saturday is usually at the end of July, though in 2007 both the last Saturday of July and the first Saturday of August are designated as Black Saturdays.

The Autoroute du Soleil, the highway to the south of France and Spain, is usually particularly busy. In 2004 there was more than 700 kilometres (430 mi) in accumulated traffic congestion.

The black colour is the qualification with which the French government web site Bison Futé designates a day with extrêmement dense (extremely busy) traffic. The French newspapers call this day samedi noir after Bison Futé's qualification . Usually, the French call these days les jours de grands départs (days of great departures). In Dutch, this French phenomenon was known as zwarte zaterdag long before the French adopted the term samedi noir, both meaning (literally) Black Saturday.