Wow, talk about your weird weeks.
This week’s particular weirdness all comes down to the weather. Starting on about Sunday we got into one of our standard summertime north-easterly air streams. This of course meant that (since the air in question was coming out of the central deserts) temperatures started to rise. Nothing too unusual about that, it’s fairly normal summer weather here in Perth. What was unusual was another factor that combined with the standard pattern to…. well you’ll see.
The other factor was Tropical Cyclone Fritz (that’s Hurricane Fritz or Typhoon Fritz depending on where you are in the world). This comparatively mild cyclone had hit the north west coast earlier in the week, and it’s remnants were smeared across the middle of the continent, right in the path of the air stream heading for Perth. This meant that rather than picking up its usual allocation of hot dry desert air, the easterly grabbed hold of vast amounts of hot, moist tropical air, and dumped it all on the city. The result? Instead of just the temperature shooting upwards – as is usual under these conditions – the humidity started to go up, and just kept on going up to absolutely insane levels.
I don’t have exact figures on the temperatures and humidity reached, as I spent most of the week in a heat and sleep deprived induced trance, but I can say with certainty that Monday and Tuesday were over 40
