So it's just on 1pm in Australia right now. It's almost 40C, 104F, but it's... Not traditionally hot. Not Australia hot. Not feels like you might combust and/or get cancer on contact with light hot that 40C/104F usually brings.
It's because the UV index, an oft-underrecognized element of hot-weather temperature, just isn't as high as it normally would be. It's peaking at 9 today, which is, on a scale of 0-13 where anything greater than a ~3-4 is a sunburn risk, awfully high, buuuuuut, it's not that high, not for a 40C day. It's unusual.
Like, this 40C is... Actually bearable. With body-wide application of sunscreen, it might actually be nice to spend a day like this outside in the shade, which is not the norm for temps like this at all (for me, at least; fuck the heat). We still have a total fire ban right now, but a lower UV index is still less harmful than otherwise, even in the case of bushfires starting.
The only thing I can figure is that this heat isn't really to do with the Sun's direct exposure on us today, but how it's affecting central Australia, north of us.
From the 9th to the 13th or so, there's a mild-to-moderate heatwave passing over central Australia, heading eastward as it goes. Right now, I believe, it's dead north of us, but not over us, and as a coastal city, we're seeing a lot of that heat kind of linger and drift down our way over the course of a week - we get a lot of weather from the north/north-west, so it kind of makes sense. It progresses far enough eastward that, by tomorrow, that nor'westerly progression of heat will miss us completely, and we'll drop 16 degrees in daytime temp down to 24C/75F, falling as low as 20C/68F early next week. Absolutely wild.
That explains why yesterday was 30C, and yet I went for a walk to the shops with my hat and no sunscreen, and came away not only unburnt, but not even all that sweaty!
I wish all our hot days were more like this.
Alas.