AUSTRALIAN HEAT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 75, 24 February 1930, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN HEAT.

THERMOMETER AT OVER 100. ambulance~kept BUSY. SYDNEY, Feb. 23. The temperature in Sydney progressed steadily yesterday until at noon it had reached 101.5. It remained in hundreds during -the next three hours with a maximum of 105.3 at two o’clock.

The heat was responsible for one death, while 50 persons collapsed. The ambulances were busv in many suburbs. Fire brigades were also busy, though the latter in some cases received false alarms owing to the extreme heat setting the patent alarms in operation. Poultry suffered extensively, and thousands are reported dead in Parramatta and adjacent districts. A dust pall made the day dull and caused much additional discomfort and distress both in the city and in the country. Many places reported the thermometer at over 100.

At the weather station in Sydney the outside temperature recorded at three o’clock in the afternoon was 110.5, at which it remained until four o’clock, then it dropped steadily to 100 at 7 o’clock and 80 at 10 o’clock. A thunderstorm at about nine o’clock brought a few drops of rain, but it soon passed. The promised southerly had not arrived this morning, though the Meteorologist expects it to-day. While a thunderstorm was passing over Molong last night a fireball badly damaged a house. The occupants, Mr O’Keefe, his wife and three, children, escaped injury by diving under the dining table. The flashing mass' then passed along the street, knocked a man named Thomas Gadd senseless, and crashed into an adjacent house, one of the residents, Miss Leatham, being struck by a falling door.