Summer is here

The heat wave continues, yesterday's top was 43 degrees, with another one predicted today, and more hot weather to come over coming days.

According to the weather bureau, the current heat wave is expected to be the hottest for something like 100 years, and there is little chance of any relief until the weekend, and even then, there will only be a brief respite before the heat rolls in again.

Apparently this heat wave is caused by a blocking high pressure system over the Tasman Sea, drawing hot Northerly winds across Victoria and South Australia from central Australia. The heat changes lots of things in the way we go about things: our houses are not built for extended heat waves, as we normally only get one or two hot days in a row before a cool change. The affordability of air conditioning systems means that many of us do have them installed these days, in contrast to my childhood when the best that we could manage was a fan.

The most extreme day that I can remember, as a child was when it reached 116 deg F or 46 C. When you don't have air conditioning, there is nothing that can be done to make the house cooler. During the heat of the day, my brothers and I sat motionless on our wide shady verandah in our cotton shorts and shirts, spreading our limbs out so that there was the maximum exposure of bare skin to any stray breeze that came along. We tried to sleep at nights, but pillows felt unbelievably hot, and after a while, nothing made a difference at all. Even sleeping on campbeds on the verandah didn't help, as the beds really only allow you to stay in one spot on the bed, in contrast to normal beds when you can move around to a spot that has not been heated to body temperature.

Eventually the temperature will drop, things will return to normal, and the events of this week will go into folklore: Do you remember how hot it was in January 2009?