A large haystack on an Olympic Highway near Bendick Murrell, has ignited amid blustery conditions.
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A passerby alerted emergency services to the blaze about 18 kilometres north of Young about 10am with crews from Bendick Murrell, Crowther, Wambanamba and Monteagle Rural Fire brigades arriving on scene a short time later. Three private fire tankers also attended.
Firefighters arrived on the property to find the haystack fully alight but a number of bales were able to be salvaged from the burning bundle.
It's believed the haystack ignited after it overheated and combusted.
But there wasn’t much firefighters could do other than watch the stack burn.
"We've just got to let it burn... otherwise it'd take three dams of water to put it out and flood it," Bendick Murrell Rural Fire Brigade captain Graeme Callaghan said.
The property owner and the Bendick Murrell brigade will be monitoring the stack 24 hours a day over several days, depending on weather conditions.
Graeme said tractors and hayforks would be used to stir up the hay and smother the flames.
"It's very windy but we're lucky it's not hot like it is in South Australia at the moment," he said.
It still wasn’t an ideal situation for firefighters ahead of a Bureau of Meteorology severe weather warning for damaging winds for people in the Illawarra, Southern Tablelands, Snowy Mountains and Australian Capital Territory forecast districts which seemed to sweep up to the South West Slopes.
The district experienced a warmer than normal morning temperature with most of us waking up at 5am to a 24 degree morning - just one degree short of the expected high of 25 degrees. As the temperature dropped to around 16.8 degrees mid-morning, wind gusts increased to between 13 and 41 kilometres per hour - much higher than the predicted 24-28 kilometres per hour today.
It was due largely to a trough over southwest NSW which crossed the southeast.
Damaging winds around 60 km/h with peak gusts of 90 km/h were forecast for parts of the Snowy Mountains, Australian Capital Territory, Southern Tablelands and Illawarra forecast districts. Wind gusts of 120 km/h had already been reported from Thredbo top station at 11pm Wednesday.