Penrith Was The Hottest Place On Earth Today, Just In Case You Were Wondering

penrith heat

The Sydney suburb of Penrith has made headlines today as it officially became the hottest place on the planet, hitting a sweltering 48.9C.

The City of Penrith recorded the temperature at 48.9C at 3pm local time. However, the Bureau of Meteorology capped the temperature at 47.7C at 2pm. Either way, it was an absolute scorcher of a day.

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In addition, the temperature was also the highest-ever recorded in the city of Penrith, obliterating a record that stood for 80 years.

Temperatures hovered above 40C for a remainder of the afternoon and into the evening, before dropping slightly just after sunset at approximately 8pm, according to news.com.au.

Australia took the cake for the hottest place in the world two days in a row, with World Weather recording Queensland’s Birdsville Airport as the planet’s hottest city on Friday as the mercury hit a whopping 46.8C.

The website also showed that the top ten highest temperatures measured on Saturday were all within Australia.

Birdsville and Narrandera came in equal-second at 46.8C, with Badgery’s Creek, Bankstown and Moomba just behind at only 0.1 of a degree cooler. These are truly hell-on-Earth conditions.

“We’ve seen many places close to the coast exceed 40C over the southeast and lots of places up on the ranges as well,” BOM acting NSW manager Jane Golding told The Guardian.

Thankfully, temperatures in the inner city of Sydney were a little cooler, exceeding 35 degrees in some parts.

The sweltering heat comes as extreme weather is predicted throughout the weekend, making for hellish conditions as bushfires ravage most of the country.

“We are seeing a very unstable atmosphere and there is a heightened risk of storm activity particularly over the far south of the state and the coastal strip up towards Sydney,” Golding said.

“Any storms that develop today, unfortunately, we’re not expecting them to bring rain but they would bring those gusty winds and that erratic wind behaviour that’s particularly concerning near fire grounds.”

Australia’s already-devastating bushfire season is expected to get even worse as extreme weather sets in over the weekend.

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