Remnants of Yasi take us to extremes

THE remnants of Queensland's Cyclone Yasi continued to bring extreme weather to Australia.

THE remnants of Queensland's Cyclone Yasi continued to bring extreme weather to Australia. The Northern Territory, Victoria and parts of South Australia copped a drenching, while Sydney's record heatwave finally broke in the afternoon.

As Yasi's tropical low-pressure system moved further inland, moisture from the system streamed ahead, joining damp air lingering in the southern states from Cyclone Anthony, producing record rainfall in many areas.

The system remained active over the NT yesterday, where areas north of Alice Springs received more than 100mm of rainfall in the 24 hours to last night.

As houses were lost in a rapidly moving bushfire on the outskirts of Perth, meteorologists in Sydney tallied up the broken weather records, judging the city's heatwave its longest ever.

Weather experts said it was the same static high-pressure system that helped push Yasi towards the Queensland coast and inland last week that caused the soaring Sydney temperatures. The city sweltered through seven consecutive days of above 30C temperatures last week.

Sydney also recorded its hottest night since 1973 last night. At midnight, the temperature was still 33C in the city, and the mercury dipped to only a still-balmy 28C at 6am. Saturday night was the fifth consecutive night above 24C; before that Sydney had never experienced more than two.

The intense heat continued throughout the morning in Sydney, with the sweltering conditions abating only about lunchtime when a cold front pushed up from Victoria, slashing the temperature by 15C in less than three hours.

At the peak of yesterday's heatwave, even the beach proved too hot for Chris Wallace and his girlfriend, Lara Picone.

But as the cool change approached, the couple returned for a final swim.

"When we heard it was going to get cooler this afternoon, we decided to come down here and get the last of it," Ms Picone said as the couple took a swim at Gordons Bay in Sydney's east.

"We tried to buy a fan yesterday, but they were all sold out."

Weatherwatch meteorologist Don White said the extreme conditions were all, in one way or another, related to Yasi.

"Yasi was a very powerful system," he said.

The town of Mildura in northwest Victoria received about 180mm of rain over the weekend, or almost two-thirds of its annual rainfall, with 147mm falling on Saturday alone.

"They had two months' average rainfall in about 10 minutes," Mr White said. "This will be the fifth consecutive month in which they've had more than 100mm of rainfall.

"In the last 35 years they only had one month with more than 100mm and now they've had five in a row."

Areas around Broken Hill in western NSW and into eastern South Australia received more than 100mm of rainfall in the 24 hours to last night. One gauge reportedly received twice its annual rainfall.

In Wagga Wagga in southern NSW, the body of a man in his 50s was recovered yesterday inside a Toyota Hilux utility, 400m from a flooded creek crossing.

Cooler weather is forecast for Sydney and other parts of NSW until the middle of the week, along with mild and dry conditions in Victoria and South Australia.

Rain will ease in the NT, while thundery rain will return to Queensland -- which had dry weather yesterday -- next week. The outlook for WA is variable.