NSW heatwave: Sydney the hottest place on Earth
IT’S going to be another hot one for Sydney today, but thankfully much cooler than yesterday’s scorcher when Sydney became the hottest place on earth.
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The city will hang around the low 30s, a 10C drop from yesterday
A cool change won’t come through until Wednesday
IT’S going to be another hot one for Sydney today, but thankfully much cooler than yesterday’s scorcher when Sydney became the hottest place on earth.
The city will hang around the low 30s, a 10C drop from yesterday when Sydneysiders sweated through the hottest day in almost 80 years.
After overnight storms, Penrith and Richmond are expecting another day of 40 temperatures, with 41C and 42C on the cards.
Weatherzone meteorologist Tom Hough said even though there was rain around this morning, a cool change won’t come through until Wednesday.
“It’s going to be a lot cooler than yesterday but still pretty warm for Sydney,” Mr Hough said.
“The city will have top temperatures in the low 30s, 10 degrees cooler than the peak yesterday for the city.
SYDNEY SUBURBS’ ANNUAL MIGRATION TO THE BIG CITY BEACHES
“Those storms we saw this morning have moved offshore, we had four lightning ground strikes within 20km of north Sydney.
“We could see a few showers later on, more likely out west.”
The sweltering Harbour City’s power and public transport infrastructure went into meltdown yesterday as a result of a record-breaking heatwave in which emergency services were also stretched to the limit with a number of critical incidents across NSW beaches packed with crowds trying to beat the heat.
Temperature records tumbled when the Western Sydney suburb of Penrith hit 47.3C at 3.25pm, edging past its previous record of 47C on February 11 last year.
The Bureau of Meteorology initially announced Penrith’s temperature as the hottest in Sydney’s history but later clarified to say that Richmond, which reached a top of 46.3C yesterday, still held that record high.
The Old Richmond Station set the record with 47.8C in 1939.
Meanwhile, the city experienced its hottest day in five years to hit a maximum temperature of 43.4C at Observatory Hill yesterday.
The last time the CBD’s mercury came close to that number was on January 18 in 2013, when Sydney hit 45.8C.
It was a sticky afternoon for some commuters who were left waiting on platforms with extreme temperatures affecting track infrastructure.
A NSW Transport spokeswoman said there were minor delays on the Central Coast and Newcastle train line.
Speed restrictions were also enforced across the Sydney network. Meanwhile, power outages across the Central Coast hit more than 4000 homes with major blackouts in Bateau Bay, Forresters Beach, Noraville, West Gosford and Narara while almost 3000 properties were left without power throughout Sydney.
An Ausgrid spokeswoman said while additional load on the network from the high temperatures had contributed to some of the outages, there were several other factors at play.
Technicians were yesterday still working to restore power to some affected areas yesterday last night.
Unsurprisingly, lifesavers were kept on their toes responding to a “number of fairly critical situations” at beaches across NSW.
A spokesman for Surf Lifesaving NSW urged people to take care of their own safety and only swim at patrolled locations in the days ahead.
“It’s been an exceptionally busy weekend for lifesavers with extreme heat on Sunday,” the spokesman said.
“Our advice to people is to look after their own safety by heeding any warnings, knowing the conditions and really taking that extra effort to swim at a patrolled location.”
While there were no bushfires, firefighters were still busy responding to 335 fire alarm calls as a result of the devices tripping in the heat.
Police were also forced to remind people not to leave children or animals inside vehicles after officers had to smash a window to rescue a distressed seven-week-old puppy from a hot car at Oran Park on Saturday.
Police said the temperature inside the car was approximately 65C. The Bureau of Meteorology indicated several other records were also expected to be smashed across the state.
The temperature at Canterbury Racecourse hit 44.9C, beating the previous high of 44.6C on January 18, 2013 and at Horsley Park Equestrian Centre, the mercury hit 45.3C. surpassing the previous highest temp of 44.9C recorded on January 18, 2013.
While today “won’t be cool”, Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Helen Reid said the heat will be easing before it builds again: “It’ll stay hot in western NSW and it’ll still be hot in western Sydney too, but it will be a bit of a relief from Sunday’s temperatures”.
Sydney is set to reach a maximum of 33C today while Penrith will hit 40C.