Some good storms to the North of Perth this morning. I have woken upto almost continual deep rolling distant thunder, these storms may slide to the East. Infact maybe its best they do looking at the intensity of the rainfall asociated with them.

What an amazing few days here in South-western Australia. A mid level low combining with a surface low bringing tropical moisture from a cyclone over a thousand miles to our North-west in the Indian Ocean. Storm heaven, as usual with storms some places miss out and that included the Perth CBD with only 12mm. However Collie East 200km South of Perth recorded 134mm between 9am and 9pm yesterday with widespread flooding! Reports of over 200mm in the same period just North of this location. Rivers in the area are still on flood alert, quite amazing for South-West Australia in the dry season. Even Mandurah recorded 75mm on Tuesday night and there was flooding in that area to. A 1 in a 100 year event is being called for this. Things are drying out now fortunately.

Well, it looks like we are heading for a Summer of extremes. I still cannot believe the 200mm of rain recorded in a 12 hour period that parts of the SW Land Division, to the South of Perth saw 10 days or so ago. But, hey we move on to more extreme weather in relation to heat.

 As now we have a heatwave coming!

xmas eve - 34c xmas day - 39c boxing day - 38c Thursday 38c, Friday 39c, Saturday 38c.

We are doing the turkey on the bbq, but with those temps it may cook anyway by leaving it outside in the sun ;-)

Nighttime temperature are going to be around 20-25c as a minimum so not much relieve at night either, with the humidity gradually building. Storm potential on Friday and Saturday, with that amount of energy in the atmopshere it could go bang spectacularly.

Happy xmas everyone from Australia :-)

Thanks for all your excellent and informative posts.

Its a pleasure Gavin, i find the North American thread in here fascinating and it would be great to see some contributions from other parts of the world in the future.

By the way we have an upgrade on our heatwave which is now beginning to threaten to be a notable event for so early in the Summer.

Xmas day 39c, boxing day 38c, Thursday 39c, Friday 39c, Saturday 40c, Sunday 40c.

From Friday onwards there is a thunderstorm risk, as the trough really does not want to move inland, which is quite rare, but a regular occurance this year. So far this year the amount of moisture through cloud and storms etc associated with troughing has meant we have not had the very high temperatures. Obviously this time its different.

Phew

That's 6 days in a row over 38C . I think I only experienced that once in the 3 years I was there. I was in a 1 bedroom place with no air-conditioning and my God it was hell.

I see what you mean.

http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/Perth+ASXX0089:1:AS

Well Perth reached 39.6c today. A hot xmas day for sure, however this is just the start of a big heatwave!

4 days above 40c predicted by the Bureau of meteorology from Thursday. Ouch!, ouch and ouch!

That's amazing - 4 in a row over 40C that's a serious hot spell.

Keep us informed.

We had one of the coolest Christmas Days on record over Sydney and the wettest day since June, we topped out just above 20c but felt much colder. There were also plenty of thunderstorms around, rained most of the day. It actually felt like Christmas in the UK as light levels were very poor indeed!

Chrsitmas Eve reached 38c before the southerly change moved through during the evening. My relations from the UK were really suffering on Xmas Eve so it wasn't a bad thing that this changed moved through. Didn't really spoil the plans too much, shortened the traditional Chrsitmas Day cricket match, but we made the best of it.

Another cool cloudy day with showers for Boxing day, we will probably struggle to get much over 20c again. We won't see another 30c temp over Sydney until the New Year now.

There will be plenty if disapointed tourists in Sydney this week. People don't often realise that Summer in Sydney is the wettest / most changeable time of the year here. We don't have the certainty of heat like Perth or Adelaide.

Hi

We've been on holiday in Australia for nearly 3 weeks now, mostly in Sydney, and the weather has been very nice - lots of days around 27C to 30C around the harbour which has been perfect. So, it was a real shock when the weather really turned nasty for Xmas day - a really horrible, cool and wet day. To be honest, it seemed to ruin the day for thousands - they were expecting 40,000 on Bondi, I counted less than 40 people at 1pm !!

We spent 5 days up in Hamilton Island (on the Barrier Reef) - what a beautiful place it is, and with pretty good weather too, about 30C in the day and cooled to about 25C at night.

Back to UK on Friday, nothing cold on the horizon at the moment, but still a shock coming up I think.

Regards,

Mark

Hope you have enjoyed your time here, sounds like you have  Southerly changes are a common occurance of Sydney summer weather, a little unfortunate that this particluar southerly change moved through when it did. Personally I don't mind a wet cool Christmas Day, but then I live pretty close to the beach we go to anyway so a change of plan for us is no great pain, plus we have a good under cover entertaining area.

Bondi is ferral on Christmas Day, I wouldn't go any where near the place. However I would have gone to Bondi yesterday if there were only a handful of people there. I hate Bondi when it is packed with sunburnt backpackers getting pissed all day. Usdually I don't go to Bondi between December - March.

Things should start warming up again from this weekend and temps could get in to the mid 30's in early Jan, but you will be home by then I guess.

Well, its beginning to look like we could be heading for the hottest 7 days ever recorded in Perth. The forecast for the next 4 days is truly scorcho! 41c, 40c, 42c and then 41 on Sunday. Temperatures on Monday will be 38c, but only as a very humid change occurs. Even throughout next week the Easterlies will still be pumping extreme heat west, and the trough will struggle to move inland. That means humidity with a sea breeze situation. Thunderstorm risk tomorrow, should be interesting at 41c. Today the city only reached 37.5c, just a little inland Pearce airforce base hit 42c. Tried to make the most of the reduced heat today, but it still was very hot :-) 

 great stuff - a big thanks.

Keep us informed on it. I thought the hottest 7 day period on record in Perth was in 1991. I missed it by a few weeks.

I am glad I missed it in fact - I often wonder what my old flat would have been like with that.

45.8C in the January and in February the Perth record was nudged up again to 46.2C.  

This link below is excellent and it lists all the major hot spells in Perth in recent times.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~jacob/summer.html

This next link below states what Perths hottest nights were.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~jacob/heat.html

The hottest night I ever had there was 28C and my God - you never sleep with the likes of that.

Interesting link. I bet that record low December maximum of 14.9ºC must have felt bitterly cold for the locals.

Just wondering, how many 40ºC+ days does Perth usually get in an average summer?

I quite like Manly Beach however, which seems to be a lot quieter and very pleasant!

We used to reckon - that was when I was living there in the late 1980s to get around 5 to 7 in a whole summer. That was for example December to February - But in Perth in many respects summer lasts from November to March inclusive.

March in many respects felt like just an extension of February.

With regard to the cool days I remember and I think it was January 1989 getting a maximum of 19.6C - It felt so cool that I had a wear a pullover albeit a thin one - thats a indication of what it's like to live in a hot climate.

Hobart has broken its all-time record high temperature with 41.3C and still rising. They also set a new record high low temperature with 25.7C (or 23.4C going by 9am-9am period). They could even break the Tasmanian state record. Not bad  for a location with summers virtually identical to somewhere like Sheffield.

A major heatwave is setting up across the majority of Australia in the days ahead. Sydney and Melbourne look to escape the worst and here in Perth we may see temps drop back to around 30c from next Tuesday. It stems originally from what we endured here in Perth in the last week of December. The interior has been literally cooking for weeks now. It gave Perth its 3rd hottest consecutive 7 days since records began. 42.1c on New Years Eve despite a weak sea breeze setting in, quite incredible. At midnight it was 32c with a dew point of 22c, that is tropical, there was only one way to bring in 2013, and that was in the pool 🙂 December turned out to be a wet month, and also one of the hottest on record.

Another warm weekend ahead with temps of 36 and 37c, overnights lows of 23 and 24c, with the risk of a thunderstorm on Sunday.

Keep us informed. I love reading this about Australia.

That's amazing 3rd hottest 7 day period on record.

Have you any idea what is the largest consecutive sequence of 40s and over is for Perth.

I am guessing here - but I think it's 8 in a row.

Hobart recorded its highest temperature ever yesterday with a figure of 41.8C. This beats the previous record of 40.8C recorded on 4 January 1976.

For many places the heatwave is expected to continue well into next week
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20130103.shtml

Looking back at the data I can only see 4 consecutive days at most over 40C. 3 consecutive days has happened many times. In 1991 when the record high temperatures occurred there were 3 consecutive days from 29th to 31st Jan. The 4 consecutive days occurred in 1933 between 7th and 10th Feb with the peak at 44.6C.

You mentioned earlier in the thread the record temperatures in 1991 which was exceptional with a total of 6 days over 40C that summer. The peak being the 46.2C on 23rd Feb. Prior to 1991 the temperature had only exceeded 44C twice with 44.7C on 12th Jan 1978 and 44.6C on 8th Feb 1933.

The year with the most number of days above 40C was 2007 with 9 which included both Christmas Day and Boxing Day

There is an awful lot of free data available for download from BOM for many individual stations which is superb - see this link http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/stations/. A pity we can't have that in the UK.

That's excellent. I had no idea the record is only 9. What is apparent though from my time there is that there are many runs over 35C which feels hot.

I noticed that it didn't start to feel hot or quite hot until 35C was reached and then the feeling of heat went up exponentially from there.

A 40C day always felt very hot indeed and was usually accompanied by a minimum at night of around 25C making it very hard to sleep.

When I was living which is now over 20 years ago many homes and apartments didn't have air-conditioning and my place was one of them and it was hell in summer.

If I was to had my time there again now air-conditioning would be a must have.