Hottest day in how long?

Unless I misheard, I think they said on the news tonight that Hobart had it's hottest day in over a century?? The temps soared to a max of 40.6 Celsius today with it 29.9 at 9pm. This is extraordinarily hot for Tasmania.

I had prepped this morning with a soil soaking hose in the veg patch, and everything pulled up quite well. There was heat stress on the curcubits, and the corn leaves were rolling a bit. The spuds showed the biggest sign of stress but they pulled through two high 30 degree days last year so they should be fine.

The pigs and chooks did not enjoy the heat. I kept popping out to the pig pen to add water to their wallow and to hose them down. The poor things do not take well to the heat.

As I have a weather station and the Grove BOM station is not the best for comparison I plan to give the monthly averages as time goes by. This will obviously only be of interest to locals. The December averages were as follows:

                   Dec 2012               Dec 2011
Min Avg         9.2                              8.9
Max  Avg       22.2                           22.1

Rainfall:        38.4mm

The porkers did not take well to the heat.

Heat stress on the spuds