Relief has arrived for some sunbaked Australians after several states sweated through one of the hottest December days in years.
However, extreme fire danger warnings remain, with high bushfire risks across Australia’s south-east.
A high fire danger warning will remain for much of central NSW on Tuesday, as Sydney temperatures are expected to rise again.
Parts of Victoria, NSW, Queensland and South Australia topped 45 degrees on Monday, while the Northern Territory faces severe to extreme heatwave conditions for much of the next three days.
“It’s very hot out there,” Dean Narramore from the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Mount Lofty Ranges, in eastern South Australia, and most of western and central Victoria, including Melbourne, are under extreme fire danger warnings.
“These hot, dry, windy conditions are likely to lead to extreme fire dangers,” Narramore said.
“That means that if fires do get going in this weather, they’re likely to be uncontrollable and uncontainable.”
South Australia’s Renmark and Queensland’s Urandangi recorded statewide maximums of 46.5 and 46.4 degrees.
Walpeup, in Victoria’s north-west, was the hottest place in the state on Monday at 47.1 degrees – a temperature not seen since the year of the Black Summer bushfires. Temperatures ranged from the low to mid 40s throughout western and southern parts of NSW.
Alice Springs reached 41.9 degrees just before 3pm, before the mercury fell 15 degrees in just over 90 minutes.
Melbourne fell short of its forecast high of 41, with the temperature topping out at 39.4 degrees.
A cool change hit the Victorian capital later on Monday night, after dramatically dropping temperatures in Geelong and elsewhere in the state’s west.
Earlier, the mercury hit 45.3 degrees in Mildura, 45 in Swan Hill and 44 in Horsham, all along the Murray River.
Total fire bans were declared across most of Victoria with incident management teams and firefighting aircraft on standby in critical regional areas.
An emergency warning was issued on Monday night for an out-of-control bushfire near Creswick, north of Ballarat.
Residents in the warning area were told the safest option was to leave immediately before conditions become too dangerous.
Firefighters also responded to blazes in western and eastern Victoria, and a grassfire in Melbourne.
While the mercury in Sydney reached 29 degrees, NSW’s maximum of 45.6 degrees was recorded in Wilcannia, in the state’s central north-west, and 45.4 in Ivanhoe, about 180 kilometres further south.
Queensland, meanwhile, faces the risk of flash flooding with wet weather forecast from Yeppoon on the central coast south to Brisbane.
The bureau warned residents in the state’s south-east to prepare for heavy falls.
“Over the next three or four days, there could be widespread falls of 50 millimetres to 100 millimetres and isolated falls up to and exceeding 250 millimetres,” Narromore said.
The heat will remain for the rest of the week in Queensland and the NT.
-with AAP
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