January was Australia’s hottest month ever – govtBy The Manila TimesSYDNEY: Australia suffered its hottest month ever in January, when widespread heatwaves exacerbated an already devastating drought, fuelled bushfires and contributed to mass fish deaths, officials reported Friday. “We saw heatwave conditions affect large parts of the country through most of the month, with records broken for both duration and also individual daily extremes,” said senior bureau climatologist Andrew Watkins. The hottest temperatures during the month were experienced in South Australia, where the mercury hit 49.5 degrees C (120 degrees F) on January 24. Authorities said the January heatwave contributed to the deaths of more than a million fish in the Murray-Darling river system, the country’s largest running through five states in the east of the country. Meanwhile, bushfires — which are frequent summer occurrences in Australia’s arid southeast — spread far into the tropical northeast of the country in January.

Source: Manila Times January 31, 2019 23:37 UTC