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It's been a bit hot here...
Dec. 21st, 2019 07:20 pm So the hottest average temperature days Australia has ever had were the last three days. It feels like South Australia made a large contribution to this - it was 44°C here for those three days (cooler today thankfully!). On Thursday night it barely dipped below 35°C even at midnight. This was doubly shocking because we have had a very mild spring and summer - verging on the positively chilly at times.
What's it like when it's that hot? Well, go turn your oven on to about 200°C. Make sure you turn the fan on too. Let it get up to temperature. Now open the door. That's what it's like going outside when it's 44°C. You don't notice that you're sweating profusely unless you touch something plastic because your sweat evaporates instantly - as does all the moisture in your eyeballs. When you turn the cold tap on the water comes out hotter than the hot tap. The birds pant. One bird came and sat right in the strawberry plants just after we watered them - we thought it must have been trying to cool its feet down. And I nearly gave myself heat stroke on Friday trying to finish my Christmas shopping.
And now everything is on fire too. There is a fire in the hills here that started yesterday, has burnt 25,000 hectares, and is still going. One person h as died and a dozen or more houses have been lost. We can smell the smoke from that at times. My sister had to evacuate her house (just for a day fortunately) a couple of weeks ago thanks to a fire in Ipswich (on the western outskirts of Brisbane). The fires in NSW are completely out of control. Tonight they are bearing down on Lithgow, a town of 12,000 people.
It feels a bit weird to be making Christmas plans in the middle of all this. I am working right up until Christmas, and then taking nearly four weeks off, which I am looking forward to a great deal. We will have Christmas at home and then a quick trip to Queensland in the new year for my Dad's 70th birthday. I might write more about food plans later, if I am not too busy actually cooking or freaking out over bushfires.
What's it like when it's that hot? Well, go turn your oven on to about 200°C. Make sure you turn the fan on too. Let it get up to temperature. Now open the door. That's what it's like going outside when it's 44°C. You don't notice that you're sweating profusely unless you touch something plastic because your sweat evaporates instantly - as does all the moisture in your eyeballs. When you turn the cold tap on the water comes out hotter than the hot tap. The birds pant. One bird came and sat right in the strawberry plants just after we watered them - we thought it must have been trying to cool its feet down. And I nearly gave myself heat stroke on Friday trying to finish my Christmas shopping.
And now everything is on fire too. There is a fire in the hills here that started yesterday, has burnt 25,000 hectares, and is still going. One person h as died and a dozen or more houses have been lost. We can smell the smoke from that at times. My sister had to evacuate her house (just for a day fortunately) a couple of weeks ago thanks to a fire in Ipswich (on the western outskirts of Brisbane). The fires in NSW are completely out of control. Tonight they are bearing down on Lithgow, a town of 12,000 people.
It feels a bit weird to be making Christmas plans in the middle of all this. I am working right up until Christmas, and then taking nearly four weeks off, which I am looking forward to a great deal. We will have Christmas at home and then a quick trip to Queensland in the new year for my Dad's 70th birthday. I might write more about food plans later, if I am not too busy actually cooking or freaking out over bushfires.
