http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1676386,00.html

Bernard O'Riordan in Sydney
Monday January 2, 2006
The Guardian

Sydney sweltered through its hottest New Year's Day on record yesterday as blowtorch conditions pushed the mercury to 44.2C (112F), causing power blackouts and sparking more than 40 bushfires along Australia's east coast.

:o

Welcome to summer in Australia. Melbourne, Victoria also had its hottest December day on New Years Eve.

Excerpt from their paper

The temperature peaked at 42.9 degrees in Melbourne at 5.15pm yesterday - the city's previous hottest December 31 was back in 1862 when the mercury topped 41.7 degrees.
Senior forecaster Ward Rooney said the southern capital's temperature jumped around a lot during the first hours of the new year.
"The minimum temperature was 21.9 degrees at 6.01am but it actually fluctuated quite a bit overnight," Mr Rooney said.
"At 8pm last night it was still 41.1, it dropped down to 25.8 at 9pm and then started rising again and by 2am it was 33.3.
"It stayed up around that for the next hour or so because it was still 29 at 4am, and then it fell sharply down to the 21.9 minimum at 6am."

Its all quiet normal for this country at this time of year. The east coast has recorded a slight rise in December average temps this year - by 1 to 2 degrees.

The opposite end of the spectrum has been here on the west coast in Perth. We just had our coldest December in 150 years. We had just one day of 31c (bout 88f) and all the rest were below 25c (78f). Thats an average of 10 degrees celcius below average for us. The previous two christmas breaks were nasty and well into the mid 40s c.

A couple of years before that we had a christmas and boxing day that were both 47c and I cant convert that because my conversion chart doesnt go that far !!!!! Suffice to say it was humid, hot and vile and I had 12 people come visit me and my aircon to watch the entire Star Wars trilogy in the cool house !

As a non summer person I have to say I have really enjoyed the past 2 months of delightful weather and it has saved me a fortune in power bills. Its a mild 30c today - no breeze or humidity.

I am sure Mr Sun will eventually realise he forgot Perths normal nasty heat and switch it on this month - and leave it on till May !  Ugh.

Meanwhile - spare a thought for the firefighters and volunteers who have spent the past few days fighting bushfires throughout Victoria and New South Wales. There have been quite a few homes lost already and a volunteer died yesterday.

Welcome to summer in Australia. Melbourne, Victoria also had its hottest December day on New Years Eve.

...
A couple of years before that we had a christmas and boxing day that were both 47c and I cant convert that because my conversion chart doesnt go that far !!!!!
...


47C on Christmas day? That's 116.6F (!). Christmas time in the summer has got to be an odd experience.  :)

47C on Christmas day? That's 116.6F (!). Christmas time in the summer has got to be an odd experience.  :)


Not really - not when its been like that your entire life and half the planet has it that way (ie the bottom half). The only cold christmas's I have had were the few I had when I was living in London and even then it didnt bother to snow and give me a "traditional" (ie northern hemisphere traditional) white christmas.

Some people in Aus still do the traditional hot roast regardless of the heat inside and outside the kitchen !, but a greater percentage do cold meat platters and salads, or BBQs on the beach or in shady parks.

The cool month that I mentioned in my previous post ended today !! Hot and humid today and set to stay like that for nect few months.