Blistering heatwave hits Australia as temperatures soar to a scorching 40C – and extreme weather also forces an urgent fire warning
- Sydney will be 34C on Friday, prompting thousands to flock to the beaches
- But the heat has prompted a severe fire warning in the hunter valley region
- Up the coast in Queensland, Brisbane will be a toasty 28C on Friday
- Melbourne is 16C on Friday but will rise to 27C on Saturday due to heat wave
Australia is bracing for severe bushfires as a heatwave brings dry air and temperatures of 40C.
Sydney will be 34C on Friday, prompting thousands to flock to the beaches to start the weekend.
But the heat has prompted a severe fire warning in the Hunter Valley, with high fire danger warnings in place in surrounding regions.
Sydney will be 34C on Friday, prompting thousands to flock to the beaches to start the weekend. Pictured: Revellers enjoy the heat
Firefighters battle bushfires in Angourie, northern New South Wales on September 10
Up the coast in Queensland, Brisbane will be a toasty 28C on Friday and the mercury will rise to 34C early next week, 11C above average for this time of year.
Meanwhile in Ipswich, temperatures are set to reach 40C on Tuesday as a high pressure system brings hot desert weather from central Australia to the south.
‘During the weekend, that hot air mass will push all the way towards the east coast, leading to near record high October temperatures,’ said Sky News Weather chief meteorologist Tom Saunders.
Adelaide will be 27C on Friday but the hot plume won’t quiet reach further south with Melbourne and Hobart both topping at 16C.
Melbourne will heat up on Saturday, however, with the mercury hitting 27C.
Meanwhile, Perth will be 20C, Canberra will be 25C and Darwin will be 34C on Friday.
It comes after Daily Mail Australia reported that employers fear the hot weather may prompt workers to call in sick.
Australia is bracing for severe bushfires as a heatwave brings dry air and temperatures of 40C. Pictured: Sydney’s Bondi Beach
Unscheduled sickies cost individual businesses $340 a day, per worker, as the economy loses more than $30billion a year through absenteeism, the Australian Industry Group says.
Joydeep Hor, who has been an employment lawyer for 22 years, said dishonest workers were finding novel ways to chuck a sickie, including convincing their local pharmacist to give them a medical certificate.
‘It’s not difficult to get a medical certificate nowadays – even pharmacists give them away,’ he told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday.
‘An individual might say, ‘Well, if I have to provide a certificate, I’ll just go to my local chemist and cough and splutter a little bit, get a certificate and away I go. I can send that to my employer and what are they really going to do about it?’.
Temperatures in Sydney are expected to soar to 34C on Friday and could reach 40C in north Queensland over the weekend. The forecast for 4pm on Friday is pictured
In Ipswich, temperatures are set to reach 40C on Tuesday as a high pressure system brings hot desert weather from central Australia to the south
‘That is reasonably common. They don’t have to give any details.’
Mr Hor, the founder and managing principal of employment law firm People + Culture Strategies, said often it was difficult for employers to prove a staff member had lied about being sick.
‘Often, it’s a very hard thing to pinpoint,’ he said.
‘If you’re an employer and you’re presented with that certificate, it’s very difficult and certainly cumbersome, even if you’ve got a lot of genuinely-held suspicions about the veracity of it.’
Workers are entitled to take one day off and claim sick leave without a medical certificate under federal laws introduced in 2009.
Employers, however, can legally implement policies requiring staff to present medical certificates if they take a day off on either side of a long weekend.