A brutal heat wave building over Australia could come perilously close to toppling the country’s all-time high temperature record—no small feat when the nation routinely broils beneath the hot summer sun.
The heat doesn’t get to stand alone. There’s also a stubborn tropical system lurking hundreds of kilometres inland, thriving on the warm, moist soils of northern Australia as if the land were the ocean itself.
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Australia is no stranger to extreme weather
Australia’s rough and tumble reputation extends beyond its venomous spiders and carnivorous sea sponges.
The country’s immense size and position leaves it exposed to the entire spectrum of calamities—including terrible wildfires, powerful cyclones, and even Prairie-like severe thunderstorms.
This vast size can be hard to grasp given the country’s relative isolation. Australia stretches from the tropics to the mid-latitudes, a 3,600+ km north-south extent that’s roughly equal to the distance from Toronto to San Jose, Costa Rica.
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A flight from the western city of Perth to the eastern city of Brisbane is about the same distance covered by the five-hour flight from Vancouver to Atlanta, Georgia. Again: it’s huge.
And since much of the country lies beneath a strip of atmosphere where sinking air dominates, a solid majority of the country is covered by the rust-tinged desert sands of the Outback—the perfect environment to foster extreme heat.
Heat ridge sends temperatures soaring into the 40s
It’s the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere and the skies over Australia are bringing the heat. Making matters worse is a strong El Niño continuing in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which tends to foster hot summers on the other side of the ocean.
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A powerful ridge rising in the atmosphere over the centre of Australia will force heat to build in abundance over the next week. This significant heat wave will send temperatures soaring into the 40s for hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of land.
This will be a long-duration heat event, to boot, with up to a week of 40-degree daytime highs possible for communities away from the ocean.