See JoNova blog for this and more facts.

” Melbourne, 200,000 houses blacked out, 10 companies curtailed, as 1-in-3-year hot day hits ”

An extract:

It’s being billed as wildly extreme, but Melbourne officially peaked at 42.8C. Bob Fernley-Jones looked back at the long Melbourne Regional Office data going back to 1855, and found around 30 corrected “50″ examples of a day of 42C or more. Days like this are one-in-3-year-event. This is summer in Melbourne. It’s not rare and any half-competent planner would plan accordingly.

As Bob points out the highest spikes in Jan ’39 and Feb 2009 are arguably outliers “resulting from freakish hot northerlies (and the most terrible Victorian bushfires).  If they are waived as outliers, then for the rest of the record from 1855 it’s all pretty dam flat?”

Temperatures recorded above 42C in Melbourne from 1855 to 2015.  (Regional Office)  Thanks to Bob Fernley-Jones.

Furthermore, this “42.8C” was recorded on an ultra sensitive electronic sensor which means it could well be a “one second record” that is artificially inflated compared to the same day as measured with a mercury thermometer which is slower to respond. The half hour observations in Melbourne peaked at 42.3C. The BOM could tell us exactly how long temperatures “peaked” for. Will they? They could tell us exactly how different the two thermometer types are, but Bill Johnston found they are destroying that data.

Seriously, officer, these two thermometers are exactly the same. Trust me.

An example of different thermometers side-by-side in a Stevenson Screen.. Photo: Bill Johnston.

 How much did it all cost?

Who will add up the electricity bill, the RERT (emergency scheme), the FCAS charges and the compensation payments?

This [RERT scheme] means paying smelters, factories and other heavy power users to rapidly curtail their energy use to rein in demand, when the system is under strain.

Who will add up the lost wages, the lost opportunities, and the jobs that never came to Victoria?

Whatever the bill, we know who will pay.

Photo Loy Yang: Jo Nova