Real Climate Records

INTERESTING RECORDS.

131 DEGREES IN THE SHADE.

The extreme heat experienced in Sydney and the colony generally during the past two days, and especially on Monday last, formed the leading topic of conversation, and the oldest resident could not remember ever having before felt it so hot.

Heaton’s ‘Dictionary of Dates’ (1879) contains some interesting figures with regard to extreme

heat in the colony, and, according to that authority, Monday’s heat was not unprecedented. A table of thermometer readings shows that on January 10 and 11, 1791, according to Colonel Collins, it was 105deg in the shade, and on a date in December not given, seven years later, it was 107deg in the shade on the Hawkesbury.

No great heat seems to have prevailed until some twenty-eight years later — or, if it did, there

is no record of it— for on November 29, 1826, we find that it was 104deg in the shade.

February, 1833, seems to have been a warm month, as it is recorded that it was 105deg to 107½deg in the sun for several days, but on January 31, 1835, it was hotter in Sydney than it was on Monday, for on that day the thermometer of the time registered 109 in the shade.

The record for heat in Australia was made ten years later, for, according to Sturt, the thermometer registered 131 in the shade in Central Australia on January 21, 1845. The 11th of the following November was also extremely hot, the same authority stating in the same part of the continent it was 127 in the shade.

According to the Rev. A. Glennie’s journal, the year 1848 opened very hot, for on January 1 it was 108 in the shade, and the heat must have been continuous, for on January 3 we find that the mercury was a degree higher.

This weather was experienced in the Patterson. January 5, 1863, in Sydney, according to Mr. Glennie, was just such a day as Monday week, the glass showing 106.9 in the shade, while on January 8, 1866, it showed 108 at Lochinvar. January 3, 1870, Mr. Russell, the Government Astronomer, states, was an exceedingly warm day, 105.2 being registered. On November 21 it was 102.5 in the shade, but it was so hot in the sun that the glass burst, and the temperature must have been over 131 to have caused that.

An authority states that on February 10 and 11, 1791, on which days the temperature at Sydney stood in the shade at 105, the heat was so excessive at Parramatta that immense numbers of large fox-bats were seen to drop from the trees into the water, and many dropped dead on

the wing.

At Sydney about the harbor in many places the ground was found covered with small birds, some dead, others gasping for water. The wind was north-west, and burnt up everything before it. Persons whose business compelled them to go out declared that it was impossible to turn the

face for five minutes to the wind. The “Sydney Gazette,” November 29, 1826, stated that “the heat and hot wind of Saturday last excelled all that we have ever experienced in the colony.” On board the Volage, man-o’-war, in the shade the thermometer was 106, and in several parts of the town was 100 and 104.

To traverse the streets was simply dreadful, the dust rose in thick columns, and the north-west

wind was assisted in its heat by the surrounding country being all on fire, so that those who were compelled to travel felt themselves encircled with lambent flames.

Sydney was more like the mouth of Vesuvius than anything else. The “Sydney Gazette,” Tuesday, February 21, 1832, stated that Saturday was one of the hottest days ever remembered; the recent rains having saturated the earth, the atmosphere was pregnated by an aqueous vapor, not unlike steam issuing from a boiler, while the sun poured down all the fury of his heat.

Man and beast groaned beneath the oppresssion, and a number of working oxen dropped down dead in the public roads. Captain Sturt, speaking of the hot day of November 11, 1845, said, “The wind, which had been blowing all the morning hot from the north-east, increased to a gale, and I shall never forget the withering effects. I sought shelter behind a large gum tree, but

the blast of the heat was so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take fire.

Everything, both animate and inanimate, gave way before it. The horses stood with their backs to the wind and their noses to the aground, the birds were mute, and the leaves of the trees fell like a shower around us. At noon I took out my thermometer, graduated to 127 degrees, and put it in the fork of a tree, and an hour afterwards, when I went to examine it, the tube was full of mercury and the bulb burst.

On the Lower Macquarie Biver, on January 11, 1878, it was 117 in the shade, and on January 18, a week later, the thermometer registered 119 in the shade.”