Not quite so warm a forecast for Dujon's place. About 30°C today. Tomorrow though is different. 36°C is the current guess. I do hope that the BoM is wrong.

(Dujon) Hmm, 36° is a bit much. It exceeds my record by the smallest possible amount. (10 Aug 03). Last December 36°F (2C) would have been a bonus. (Monthly mean 0.1°C, should be just over 5°).

Yes, when I moved down here I was somewhat unaccustomed to the heat. My first day of 42°C was somewhat of a revelation. When the wind blows it's a bit like living in a hairdryer. Still, it's a fairly dry heat in Melbourne, not like that nasty humid heat you get in the tropics.

[nfras] Indeed. I vividly remember 43+ degrees combined with gale force winds as something I had never encountered before. 43 degrees, been there done that. Gale force winds, likewise. The two together -- a completely new meteorological experience.

[CdM] Presumably you'd have a wind warming factor, so that 43 degrees in a wind feels as hot as 50?

(Raak, CdM) It's the wet-bulb temperature that counts. This is the temperature of a wet or moist surface, lowered by evaporation of water or in this case sweat. I know that the hot blast from the interior is very dry and the wet-bulb could be as low as 20° if the humidity is about say 10%. So the stronger the wind the cooler you'll feel. My guess is that those conditions are far from intolerable. Was that actually the case?

[Rosie] Yes and No. Remember that it's relative humidity that is normally quoted. Then there is the problem of how much an individual sweats and thus the effectiveness of its cooling. Perhaps this is why some people enjoy warm weather whilst others find it uncomfortable.
I cannot speak for others but in my case when it becomes really hot and the relative humidity is high (say, over 20%) my sweat pores open and drench me in my own perspiration but affords no relief.

[Rosie] Yesterday I went for an experimental hop around town and it was fine. Very pleasant in fact. Then again I don't perspire much, and have a famously warped sense of temperature. The wind was strong enough to affect how easy it was for me in my somewhat delicate state to move about (out at Tulla it seems to have measured a constant 40-50km/h all day; in the city it was all over the place). Temp was 34°C with rel hum of 23% and "wet bulb depression" according to the BoM of 14 - so i suppose that made it a nice 20°C day.

[flerdle] Wet Bulb Depression? Sounds like what happens when you have a nurse take your temperature.

(flerdle) Those figures all tie up according to my Tables of everything to do with meteorology. It seems to me that the climate of Melbourne is mostly rather bland and pleasant but every now and then someone leaves the oven door open and SE Australia gets scorched but that's probably preferable to the constant high humidity of somehwere near the equator even if the the temperature rarely rises above about 33°. Power to yer lallies, BTW. Kangaroo motion sounds hard work.

In just over a week Mrs Software and I will be landing in Melbourne. We plan a trip along the coast to Narooma to meet an old coleague and then Sydney where we fly to NZ for my daughter's wedding. so lets hope the weather is up to speed by then.