Some amazing diurnal ranges around Hobart today, 8.3/38.4 at Bushy Park and 6.8/36.8 at Grove. Temp may well go up a bit yet. 37.5 and 37.7 are the maxs to date at Hobart and Hobart Airport to date, so the BOM was right to go long on heat.

Can't remember such high temps this late in Feb in Tassie. Hard to believe it's still quite pleasant in Sydney, this heat is very focused on the southern capitals.

Old man said it was 26 earleir on in Devonport

Which is believable as the northerly is a seabreeze there. The NW coast of Tassie rarely gets to the high 20's let alone into the 30's, definitely the most heat proof part of Australia. Hobart and the SE get heat because the northerly must descend the Central Plateau, a bit like Sydney and Melbourne in that way.

Topped out at 38.8 (City) and 39.4 (Airport), amazing numbers for this late in Feb.

Well, the north coast isn't quite as heat-proof as the highest summits of the Alps, but that's about it. Low Head has never reached 30 in 117 years of observations.

Should have qualified the above as the most heat-proof part of Australia at or near sea level .

Amazing that Low Head (near George Town) hasn't ever got above 30C. As for other centres along the north coast of TAS:

Devonport: 33.2C
Burnie: 33.8C
Stanley: 32.8C (closed 1999)
Smithton: 36.6C

33C seems to be the common absolute max for stations at or near the coast. Smithtons station must be a little further inland, was surprised at this. I noticed King Island was hot yesterday also so its AWS must be on the eastern coast of the island.

Hard to put readings on Low Head or Smithton. Both sitting on the coast as well as most towns on the NW coast. Devonport/Burnie readings are too inconsistent as they are read at the airports. Devonport's sits literally on a beach,(Moorlands beach) open air. Wynyard, just a hole. Launceston/Hobart have totally diff weather patterns and temps. The only thing going against Hobart is the southerly's that rip thru you. Coldest place of been to was New Norfolk, many a year ago. Having lived in Devonport for 30 years, when the old man says it's 24 and hot - it's hot.....lol. He's gonna struggle in Cairns.

P.S Launny can be the coldest/warmest place because it sits low in the Tamar Valley. In general, good reason to leave Tassie.

When it comes to being 'on the coast', even metres can make a difference - a move of 200 metres at Low Head, from the lighthouse grounds to the headland next to the water, looks to have knocked a couple of degrees off extreme high maxima (even in the 2009 heatwave the highest they got was 26.3). A few kilometres makes even more difference, as Smithton shows (that said, the Smithton reading was one of the more remarkable ones of the 2009 heatwave).

Obscure stat of the day: Hobart and Orford managed the first recorded instances in Tasmania of consecutive nights of 22 or above.

Thanks Blair - 22 degrees is a shocker for Hobart & surrounds let alone 2 of them!!

Tassie is a wonderful spot, often check the weather down there and look at the webcam. The much more regular cold fronts would be great compared to up here but I would miss my storms a bit.

I wouldn't want to live in suburbia though, a nice quiet spot somewhere, with a good view, would suit me more.

I notice that the forum site that a few of the Tassie folk post on seems to be no longer available. Be nice if they migrated the weather discussion back here. Here hoping.

Very isolated deluge today, Wynyard, Burnie area only copped the downpour at about 5am this morning. Dumped 61mm in my rain gauge. Drove 60km to work and the last 20km were dry, was a fine sunny day everywhere else in the state. Burnie had 48mm to 3pm and Wynyard 23mm in the same time. Devonport reported 0mm...

61mm is pretty solid for there!! Slow moving storm?

Convergence zone, didn't go anywhere, just formed and dissipated. Solid showers/rain this morning, cleared to a sunny afternoon.

Hi, Just new at this and just wondering if anybody thinks this April in Hobart will set any new above average temperature records ? Is it unusual to have continual daytime temps consistently well over the monthly average and what's causing it ?

Hello Mountain H2o - welcome to the forums. Don't be scared to ask questions or even better post observations so us mainlanders have some local input from there.

I lived there for 10 years but came back to the north island a couple of years ago - miss Hobart tremendously.

We don't have many regular posters from Tas so I look forward to hearing from you.

Hobart is running about 3.5 degrees above avg so far (max) and about a degree above for nights. It can turn about in the 2nd half of April but I suspect you will end up warmer overall for the month.

The cause basically is you are getting more northerly winds than normal and also missing out on regular southerly changes so far - although you had a beauty of a change last weekend. Northerlies is the issue I reckon.

Thanks so much for your quick response. I wondered what it was. Looking at the next 7 days with averages around 24 then 25 I think next Thursday , that's like 7 degrees over and even more than the January maximum of around 22.
I just loved last weekends cold blow much better than having the heat pump on aircon cycle. Hope to post some updates / observations as best as I can for a complete beginner. Cheers

Don't worry about "beginner" we were all the same at some stage - many people on this forum hang out for info from Tassie, we used to have a good little tassie group but most wandered away, moved etc.

Any info you have will be lapped up by quite a few on the big island. Especially me because I wish I still lived there.

I've been surprised at how often lately Hobart has been hotter than here (Bathurst NSW) next week might be the same again by the look of it.

Did you head up the Mt in the cold? I loved going up there when it was nasty, I also loved going to Lake Dobson (Mt Field) when it looked like snow. Do you go to Dobson?

Speaking of the mountain, the cable car was back on the agenda last night I see:

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3476376.htm

Would be great to get some sort of all weather access up there but I doubt it.

Yeah SB there should be a much more substantial visitors centre up there - tourists and locals flock there every single day.

The issue mainly is that the mountain forms a large proportion of the water gathered for Hobart water supply. They are absolutely paranoid about any contamination of that water - fair enough really, but personally I think they are too anti development up there.

The mountain directly behind Queenstown (NZ) has a great visitors centre on it and I thought it was excellent. Some place to get out of the wind, grab a coffeee or a light meal etc would be great up there. The toilets though panic them.

Biggest problem with a cable car is that they seem to work on the theory that once a cable car exists - the road should be closed to the public - that is one aspect that the locals really don't like.

Re all weather access - the winds are so heavy down there that I reckon the cable car would be on wind hold at times anyhow. They close the road because of the nongs in 2wd (and some 4wd) cars that get stuck as soon as it's a bit slippery. Generally with 4wd it is accessible at all times if you have a key to the series of gates on the road.