The Hottest Day
Today has been the hottest day of my visit to Sydney (so far). It was already 30°C by 11am, and got warmer as the day went on, reaching 35°C by 3pm, reaching a peak of almost 37°C by 4 o’clock. I was struggling a bit by then, and decided to go back to my air-conditioned apartment for a rest. I got there just before the lovely rain came; no thunder or lightning today though.
I was prepared for the high temperatures here, but at this time of year it is very humid which I find much more difficult to deal with. The hottest place I have ever been in was Aswan in Egypt, where it was 48°C in the shade, but it was very dry and I didn’t find it all that troublesome. I was careful to drink plenty of water, as I could feel myself evaporating, but other than that it wasn’t all that bad. Years ago I went to New Orleans where the temperature was barely 30°C but the humidity so oppressive I could barely function at all, even at night.
Anyway, out of curiosity, I googled the highest temperature ever recorded in Sydney, which turns out to have been recorded at Penrith with a high of 48.9 °C (120 °F) on 4 January 2020. Yikes! Coincidentally, I am going to Penrith on Monday to give a talk at Western Sydney University. The forecast for there and then is a mere 28°C…
In the Dark 
February 23, 2024 at 1:25 pm
Don’t worry, the really high temperatures in Sydney are associated with low humidity.
New Orleans and Singapore are the worst places I have been for the combination of heat and humidity.
It took me three summers in Sydney to get used to it; I could somehow feel in that third summer that I was dealing with it better. There are mechanisms in our bodies not yet fully understood. But three summers are all I had before returning to England and, as Will Durant put it in his Story of Civilization, “The English people lived in a climate more favorable to vegetation than to health.”