Sydney’s oppressive humidity will hang around at the weekend, forecasters say – as elsewhere in the country monsoon conditions move across Queensland, Western Australia suffers a severe heatwave and Melbourne turns cool and cloudy.
“There is a lot going on,” Dean Narramore, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said on Friday.
Sydney experienced its highest dew point on record on Thursday, passing 26C. Dew point is the temperature at which the atmosphere reaches saturation with water, Narramore explained, with a higher figure meaning more muggy and uncomfortable conditions.
“That is a similar value that you’d see more so in Singapore … rather than Sydney.”
It comes after a prolonged period of east to north-easterly winds directed on to the east coast of Australia. Sea surface temperatures in the Coral and Tasman seas are up to 3C above average.
“So we’ve got very warm ocean waters and a long period of wind coming in off these hot waters, which has brought all this really high humidity to eastern Australia,” Narramore said.
Humid weather would continue in Sydney for at least for the next few days, he said. Showers and thunderstorms would roll in early next week, with humidity expected to cool off by the end of next week as southerly winds move in.
On the other side of the country, much of inland WA was expecting severe to extreme heatwave conditions on Friday and into the weekend.
Severe heatwave conditions around Perth would bring temperatures in the high 30s on Friday and into the low 40s at the weekend, Narramore said. Gusty winds would bring high fire danger as well.
And a monsoon trough was extending through the Gulf of Carpentaria and into far north Queensland, bringing widespread rain and thunderstorms. A tropical low could also develop west of Darwin at the weekend, moving across the Northern Territory next week, bringing heavy rainfall, thunderstorms and gusty winds.
The bureau is expecting a prolonged period of monsoonal activity in the next five to seven days that could bring widespread rainfall of up to 400mm across northern Australian, with higher isolated falls expected.
Heavy rainfall is also extending into Queensland, where the north tropical coast “unfortunately, yet again, is experiencing heavy rainfall”, Narramore said.
A severe weather warning for heavy rainfall and minor flood warnings are current for the Daintree River.
Melbourne was due for a cloudy weekend with temperatures in the low 20s after a sunny and hot Friday.
