Melbourne will hit 41°C today and 42°C tomorrow, before plunging to 23°C on Saturday. The present run of 40°C-plus days has been exceeded only by the buildup to the 2009 Black Saturday fires.
Eastern Sydney, with other coastal areas cooled by onshore winds, will continue to escape the worst, with temperatures hovering around 30°C. But in the western suburbs temperatures will remain in the high 30s, and many inland areas will endure two or three more days in the 40s.
Record temperatures have also been recorded in Tasmania, rising to as high as 40°C in parts of the state.
Massive precautions have been taken to protect the vulnerable from the heat. Pools and beaches have been packed, and Melbourne beaches have had thousands of people swimming into the night to escape lingering heat.
Despite warnings, emergency services members have broken into cars to remove 11 children in danger of death from heat stress. One Sydney woman has been charged after leaving her baby locked in a car in Lakemba, in the city's southwest. In Melbourne, the heat has hammered power supplies - leaving 20,000 people without power on Tuesday night - and affected train services.
Total fire bans cover large areas of Tasmania, SA, Victoria and NSW. In SA firefighters were battling dozens of fires, including a blaze near Rockleigh in the Adelaide Hills in which a woman was seriously burned trying to save pets from her home, and which has swept through 5000ha of land.
More than 200 fires were sparked by lightning strikes on Tuesday night. Dozens of bushfires, many also started by lightning, were late yesterday burning in Victoria, mostly in the northwestern Mallee region. A cafe has been destroyed on the Mornington Peninsula, southeast of Melbourne. Firefighters were late yesterday fighting almost 30 fires in NSW, including two out-of-control grass fires near Griffith in the state's southwest, and another in a forest in Big Oaky Valley, in the Upper Hunter region.
