118 degrees in Melbourne

UPDATE 3/10/09: As I was writing this post last night about the heat wave that preceded the deadly wildfires in Australia, my colleague Keith Kloor was writing his own post on the same topic. You can find it at his new blog, Collide-a-Scape.

Something very strange has been going on in Australia — and the fires that have devastated parts of Victoria and killed more than 100 people are just the symptom.

On Saturday, Feb. 7, the mercury hit 118 degrees in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. That was the peak of a heat wave that had been going on for weeks. The NASA satellite image above shows surface temperature anomalies across Australia from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average between 2000 and 2008. Temperatures in Southeastern Australia ran 10 degrees C hotter than usual. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology called the heat wave “exceptional.”

That word doesn’t even begin to describe the experience of hundreds of thousands of Australians during the heat wave. In one town, temperatures reached 107 degrees F at 3 a.m. “Such an event appears to be without known precedent in southern Australia,” stated the Bureau of Meteorology. 

The heat and its duration were not without precedent. A heat wave in 1908 that struck both Adelaide and Melbourne had slightly lower peak temperatures, but it was comparable in duration. This time around, though, both Adelaide and Melbourne set records for the most consecutive days above 43°C (109.4 F). According to the BOM:

“Adelaide’s temperatures were at this level on each of the four days 27-30 January, and Melbourne’s for three days from 28-30 January, breaking the previous records of two at both locations. Adelaide also equalled its 1908 record with six consecutive days above 40°C, while Melbourne’s three consecutive days above 40°C was the first time this had occurred since 1959, and the seventh timein history.”

With temperatures like that, along with strong winds, it’s no wonder fires took such a deadly toll. Australian authorities are now calling the catastrophe “mass murder,” because arson is now suspected. But heat also shares in the blame.