In news to give you the empathy sweats, a town in Western Australia has recorded Australia’s hottest temperature since 1960 while other areas in the state reached over 50 degrees, which I think we can all agree is Too Hot.
Onslow, a small town in the Pilbara region of the state, hit 50.7 degrees Celcius this arvo, matching Australia’s hottest recorded temp.
The record for hotty hot hotness was set in South Australia back in 1960, when Oodnadatta Airport recorded a temperature of 50.7C.
Roeburne Airport in Western Australia also recorded a temperature of 50 degrees Celcius and my pale, pale skin just started pre-emptively burning reading the words ’50 degrees’, so godspeed and suncream to any of you over in WA right now.
The hot hot heat in Roeburne was captured by journo Peter Hannam, who spotted it on a weather app.
And there we have it, a 50-degree day in Australia. Only three others recorded (on decent monitoring equipment) in history, including two of those on consecutive days in January 1960. @BOM_au pic.twitter.com/dpHFHJYsWb
— @phannam@mastodon.green (@p_hannam) January 13, 2022
The Bureau of Meteorology, which records the temperature every half an hour, reported a peak temp of 49.1 degrees for Roeburne at midday. Another forecast app called Weatherzone (which records the temp every 10 minutes) said Roeburne Airport hit 49.7 degrees at around 1.10pm WA time.
Either way, I think we can all agree that that is very, very much too hot.
Mardie in WA’s Pilbara region also hit a whopping 50.5 degrees today according to the BOM, while Google reported it hitting 51 degrees.
According to Sky News Meteorologist Rob Sharpe,who spoke to Triple M radio back in 2019, Australia’s only reported 50C weather three times.
“In the past, Australia has only recorded temperatures above 50 degrees on three occasions: the most recent being Mardie in Western Australia’s Pilbara region in 1998, and Oodnadatta in South Australia, which reached 50 degrees twice in 1960 and still holds the record of 50.7C set in January of that year.”
Australia’s been reporting increasingly hot summers thanks to the big CC (climate change, not Gemma Collins’ long-lost sister).
The summer of 2019-2020 was our second hottest on record, losing out to the 2018-2019 summer season for top spot.
Back in 2017, a study led by Dr Sophie Lewis at ANU found that in the coming decades, cities like Sydney and Melbourne could start experiencing 50C days too.
So if you’re not slip, slop, slapping, seeking and sliding already: it’s definitely time.
