I am currently covering the Sydney tennis tournament for my company, staying at Olympic Park. Tuesday calls for a high of 43 degrees! I dare say there will be a couple of 'tactical' retirements before the Aussie Open next week...

Tuesday is looking like a potentially VERY serious situation for Sydney and its surrounds. Temps could easily push 45c with a strong westerly and tinder dry bushland. Any fire that takes hold in these conditions can be uncontrolable.

I really hope that we get through Tuesday without any fires. Problem is that there are some nutters with lighters and matches out there 

Sounds dreadful, 45C is terrible for Sydney as it is often accompanied by a strong wind as well.

33°C in Venezuela for me... no air con and the power cuts almost every night (as there are over there since a few yrs back), meant we lost all fans too: still, not the slightest breeze, 33°C, about 85% humidity. Very unpleasant... especially with a 20 month old!

Today, Tuesday is set to be New South Wales's most dangerous fire danger day ever recorded. There are currently 90 bushfires burning across the state, but the conditions today are likely to be truly catastrophic. If a serious bushfire develops embers may be blown 10-20km, which is unbelievable almost. Hopefully the next 24 hours will not prove as catastrophic as feared. Temperatures in Sydney are expected to hit 43c as mentioned in previous posts.

Here in Perth we are also going to hit 40c, but with lighter winds and high humidity, fire danger is much lower. At 2pm this afternoon we had a temperature of 36c and a dew point of 22c. It was almost unbearable, and today has to go down as the hottest day i have experienced with temperatures and humidity combined.

The weekend could well see the first cyclone hit of the season for the Pilbarra, will update more nearer the time on this one.

But the concern is for NSW and the catastrophic fire danger!

I bet that's giving Perths air-conditioners a work out.

Wrt to heat in Perth I wonder if the cyclone will disrupt things.

Hi Gav,

Yeah our evaporative air con is useless in this humidity. It does bring a breeze through the house, but its a hot breeze, not pleasant at all. We are expecting an overnight low of 26c, though its still 32c at 10pm and with mid level cloud now filtering down from the North, i am wondering if we could break the all time record tonight for the hottest night. There is a threat of another thunderstorm later in the night, we had one this morning which gave 5mm of rain.

As for the cyclone, the BOM has it running down thewest coast, to bring us plenty of rain and storms. We shall wait and see on that one, it would also mean we suffer with yet more humidity.

I wondered about the all time record minimum - It was 30C when I looked on my website 4 hours ago ( I have a Perth temp link on Wunderground on my website)  and that was at least 10.00 pm your time.

If the cyclone runs down the coast that will keep you in the hot side of it - Phew my goodness - more heat with humidity there.

It's 2.00am your time at the time of me writing this post on this forum,  and it's still 30C in Perth.

On the warm side...

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rausavn1625.png

And there's the storm, predicted to drift south to the west of Perth

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rausavn1624.png

I would dread heat of that intensity.  Daytime is bad enough but the nights must be awful.

It is pretty bad, you sweat all night - but one thing which amazes me is that these days Perth seems to get a lot more of this type of weather now than it did when I was there which was in the late 1980s.

In the course of 3 and half summers I had there - there was only one which I recall which delivered what we used to call stnking nights - i.e temps over 25C at night.

I suppose there might have been one or two other times which I may have forgotten - But reading reports these days it seems to happen almost every summer there.

The official AWS site - Mount Lawley Perth Metro was reading 30.1C at 0300 local time (Perth is 8 hours ahead of GMT). Dew point at 17.2C
http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsynres?ind=94608&lang=en&decoded=yes&ndays=2&ano=2013&mes=01&day=07&hora=20

We will need to wait a few more hours to know what the minimum reached overnight is.

The record highest minimum for Perth is 29.3C which has been recorded 3 times - 6 Feb 1898, 8 Feb 1933 and 3 Feb 1962. (Note the record was set at a site which is no longer operational called Perth Regional Office - this site has been superceded by Perth Metro). The highest minimum at Perth Metro (operational since 1993) is 28.1C set on 12 March 2010.

At the weather station at Perth Airport (only operational since 1944) the record minimum is 28.7C set on 3 Feb 1962 and 26 Feb 1997.

It is 8:30 in Sydney and some areas already reporting in temps of 30c!

Going to be hell out there today, temps should push on past 40c!

Such a dangerous day in the bush, really hope no fires break out today!

Hi guys, fascinating reading of the temps while i was trying to sleep last night. Pearce AP about 40 km North of Perth did not drop below 30.4c last night, i have checked my minimum and it was 29.1c. We did not break the record though with Perth metro dropping to 27.7c i think it was. Already upto 32c here though at 6.44am, wondering if we could hit 40c by 10am this morning before a humid sea breeze sets in.

Hi - My goodness you must have got close. On the time difference I have been checking the link on my website and the lowest you got was 29C.

But it all depends on where it's recorded.

You'll get one heck of a stinker today.

40C by 10.00am - Now that must be close to a record so early in the day if you get that.

Keep us informed.

I've stayed in Singapore on quite a few occasions and it's often in the high 20s until well into the night - and humid with it.  I've just about got used to it.  Much easier with aircon but it can be noisy and the other half prefers it turned off....

What did you get in Perth today.

I see - found it from the good old West Australian daily paper for Perth.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/15782298/temp-still-30c-at-3am/

impressive all right.

Now that's what I call a hot night.

We reached 42.3c in Sydney today with a very srong NW wind, terrible conditions!  This is the third highest temp ever recorded at Observatory Hill.

You could feel the moisture being sucked out of everything. The heat of the wind was something, it took your breath away and was hard to breath in!

It is 10:15pm and is still 35c!!!!!. The southerly change isn't due through until early morning so is going to be a VERY warm night indeed.

Plenty of bush fires burning across the state tonight and the change of wind direction as the front comes through will be very dangerous indeed.

Temps will be pushing 40c by Friday and Saturday again, in fact Saturday could be worse bush fire day than today.

Actually the fifth hottest day on record in Sydney - http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/lifestyle/article/-/15786749/heatwave-causing-heatstroke/

Really not good news. There is hell of alot of fires going on over there with another intense heatwave back by Friday. Scary! This is becoming an extreme Summer here in Australia. My uncle who has lived here for getting on 50 years has never seen a Spring and Summer like this in Perth. Now we are watching the cyclone develop of the Pilbarra, this could be a biggie and hit directly on the mining region around Karratha. Alot of uncertainty on that though. But, we have a forecast of 4 days at least of thunderstorms from Saturday here in Perth. So much heat across Australia at the moment.

Hi Gav, we hit 39.1c today in the city. Fortunately the heat trough has moved inland. However tonight there is a middle level trough that may produce rain and thunderstorms. Infact it is raining right now. But the next 3 days are going to be cooler and fresher at 30c, very much looking foward to it :-)

I read that Hobart broke it's all time record high temperature a couple of days ago, anyone know the exact temperature?

It has been confirmed that today was Australia's hottest day since records began. Averaging all the observation stations across the country the average was above 40c. Quite amazing really with Wednesday expected to be even hotter. Infact there is no sign of an end to this continent wide heatwave with the cyclone expected to push down into Western Australia over the weekend and into early next week exacerbating the heat across the country.

I am pretty certain it was around 42c. It was definitely 41.1c when i checked the observation on that day and i am sure it went a little higher.