There are hopes rain similar to this 2020 storm will lower temperatures in Paraburdoo this week. (Supplied: Hugh Brown)
Forecasters say relief is on the way for a remote mining town in Western Australia’s Pilbara sweltering through a record-breaking heatwave.
Paraburdoo, 1,500 kilometres north of Perth in WA’s Pilbara, was forecast to reach 48 degrees Celsius on Monday and 47C on Tuesday.
It follows a weekend of scorching temperatures, with the mercury hitting 47.9C on Saturday and 48C on Sunday, beating the previous record of 47.8C set in 1998.
Locals doing it tough
Reuben Taniora has called the Pilbara town home for nearly two decades and said locals had to take the scorching heat into account in their everyday lives.
“It’s just trying to manage your time outside. You’ve still got your chores. You’ve still got to mow the lawns,” Mr Taniora said.
“You’ve just got to pick your times.”
He said despite living with the heat for a long time, the extremes could still take a toll.
“Yesterday was absolutely horrible,” he said.
“The biggest thing here is it’s a dry heat — the concrete’s hot, the roofs are hot, the buildings are hot, and everything struggles within town just to keep us cool.
“We’re lucky that we’ve got aircon up here.”
Even as Paraburdoo reaches record heat of 48C, having worked in the mines, Mr Taniora said those could be even hotter.
“I reckon you’d see around 55 in the open pit,” he said.
Many locals are also having fun with the heat.
Paraburdoo resident and Ashburton councillor Alana Sullivan said the heat was becoming a point of pride for the town as it looked to be crowned the hottest place in the Pilbara.
“To break the record two days in a row, everyone is a bit proud,” she said.
“We want to beat Onslow. We know we get that hot in Paraburdoo and are just hoping we can take out the title.”
Relief on the way
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Jessica Lingard said while Paraburdoo was accustomed to extreme temperatures, this summer had produced especially tough conditions.
“We’ve seen a later start to the wet season and that’s thanks to the positive Indian Ocean dipole and the El Nino working together to create a later than normal start to the monsoon,” Ms Lingard said.
“It has been very dry in the Pilbara region, which doesn’t help the heat.”
Onslow recorded WA’s hottest temperature on Sunday, reaching 48.7C, but Ms Lingard said it was likely more remote parts of the region surpassed 50C.
“If you drove south from Onslow, west from Paraburdoo, it was going to be somewhere in that no-man’s land that we saw those 50-degree temperatures,” she said.
A tropical low from the Kimberley is expected to move into the Pilbara and bring cooler conditions later in the week.
Ms Lingard said rain was forecast in excess of 150 millimetres in the Southern and Eastern Kimberley but would lessen as it moved into the Pilbara, with 40mm to 60mm of rain expected around Marble Bar and Newman on Wednesday.
Paraburdoo could see rain as early as Wednesday, then have more showers through Thursday and Friday before easing on the weekend.
But with a forecast high on Monday of 48C, Ms Lingard did not discount a third record-breaking day before the cool weather arrived.
Workers battle the heat
With the local economy based around the mining industry, many locals have had to continue working during the extreme temperatures.
Paraburdoo store owner Francis Khong has lived in town for 24 years and said he had sold a lot of cold products over the past few days.
“We’ve sold a lot more drinks, iced coffees, we’ve got a soft serve machine, and we’ve sold a lot of ice creams and slushies,” he said.
“You can see it’s hot. There’s a lot of red faces. The sweat running down their foreheads.”
Paraburdoo IGA worker Elisha Lackey said she was thankful to work indoors during the heatwave, but many people in town had been doing it tough.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people’s air-conditioning in town has gone down in their houses,” Ms Lackey said.
“Ours personally went down last night, so we’ve had to get someone out today to fix it and I know three other people whose [air conditioner] went down.”
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