Melbourne is currently experiencing some kind of record-breaking heatwave, with temperatures the past two days soaring close to 45C (according to the BOM, today's maximum temperature in Melbourne was 44.3C at 4:43pm. Cool, eh? Well... perhaps not... :-/ )
It's days (and nights) like this, that a science geek grrl such as yours truly gets to experience first hand the principle of Physics that hot air does indeed rise. As I climb the stairs of my flat, I can feel the temperature gradient go from "mildly uncomfortable, but quite tolerable" downstairs, to "Hell may not really be physically located in Brunswick, but it sure feels like it," by the time I get to the top of the stairs.
For example, at 11pm last night as I sat at my computer briefly, I noticed that the temperature in my upstairs study was still 35C. The BOM predicted that the minimum temp overnight last night would only get down to 29, but according to the actual readings, it actually got down to 28.7 at 3am- woo-hoo!.
Tonight, as I sit in my study (very briefly) at 11:30pm, I see that the temperature is now 37C, and I can feel the sweat start to trickle down my back. I think it's time to go to bed, and try to sleep... with a heavy duty fan aimed at the bed, in the hope that it won't actually feel like 37 degrees.
If you don't hear from me again, you'll know I melted away (either that, or our area has had to take its turn for the power cuts that are plaguing significant parts of th city).
As I watched a bit of the late news on TV, with a story about the heatwave conditions in Melbourne and Adelaide, bushfires around the state of Victoria etc... immediately followed by an equally dismal story about a snow storm somewhere in the US, I couldn't help but find these conditions to be reminiscent of the apocalyptic situations that were to be found in the plethora of 'beyond the end of the world' kind of movies that came out back in the 70s and 80s (remember the Mad Max movies?).
Maybe life is finally imitating art; or maybe the movie makers really were prophets.
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