A STRING of intense heatwaves have affected NSW and other parts of Australia during the past few weeks, challenging records and exacerbating the drought in some areas.
Temperature are likely to reach 46 to 48 degrees Celsius in far western NSW on Friday and hit the mid 40s in parts of central western NSW this weekend, as a pool of hot air from central Australia passes over the state.
This is the latest in a series of record-breaking heatwaves that have swept through NSW this summer.
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Last week, a weather station at Noona recorded an overnight minimum temperature of 35.9deg.
This was the highest minimum temperature on record for both NSW and Australia as a whole.
Tibooburra also registered their warmest night on record last week, twice, when the mercury only dropped to 34deg on Thursday morning and 34.2deg on Friday morning.
Days were also extremely hot last week, with Broken Hill registering a record-breaking three consecutive days at or above 45deg between Monday and Wednesday.
As temperatures soar again this week, more records will be challenged.
Wednesday was Bourke’s 15th consecutive day above 40deg and this run is forecast to continue into next week.
If it lasts until Tuesday, Bourke’s tally of 40deg days would reach 21 in a row.
Bourke’s longest consecutive run of 40deg days on record was 22, which occurred at the old Bourke Post Office site in January 1896.
However, temperature observations in Australia weren’t standardised until the early 1900’s, so data from the 19th century may be inaccurate.
Since 1900, the longest spell of days at or above 40deg in Bourke was 17 in 1939, followed by 16 in 2017.