Sydney suffers through hottest day in 80 years

SYDNEY, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- A total fire ban remains in place across the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW) on Monday, after Sydneysiders endured the hottest day in 80 years.

The weekend heatwave saw temperatures reach as high as 47.3 degrees Celsius in Sydney's west, while the rest of the harbor city sizzled at around 41-45 degrees Celsius, making it the hottest place to be anywhere earth Sunday.

"We had a troff move through central NSW," Australian Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Jordan Notara told Xinhua.

"And ahead of that troff, we had strong west to north-westerly winds and that tends to drag warm, dry air masses in from central Australia and western NSW."

Other states in the southeast of the country were also forced to suffered through the hellish weather, with conditions in some parts of Victoria so bad on Saturday, a 10-km stretch of the Hume highway began to melt under the scorching summer sun.

As a result, traffic between Sydney and Melbourne was delayed for a number of hours.

Dozens of wildfires also raged across the southeast over the weekend, with authorities responding to 51 separate fires in NSW alone.

On Monday morning, the sporting world was rocked by the news that the captain of England's Cricket team had to be rushed to hospital after battling severe dehydration during the fourth day of the final test match against Australia in Sydney.

Luckily however, a cool change is on the way, according to Notara.

"We are seeing that troff moving away this morning and we will get a little bit of a reprieve with temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius tomorrow," he said.

But despite the good news, Nortara acknowledged that it's unlikely to be a one-off.

"We expect to see at least one or two more of these extreme days of heat through the summer period," he said. Enditem