''That's blitzing records.'' A number of other heat records are likely to be set. Friday's top made it 14 days in a row above 22 degrees, smashing the previous record of six such days this late in May. Average maximums will also beat the existing record for May - 22.7 degrees set in 1958 - said Ben Domensino, a senior meteorologist at Weatherzone. While Sydneysiders may find a beach visit inviting this weekend, the knock-on effects from the abnormal warmth may be less pleasant. ''It's not scorching, it's not 45 degrees, birds aren't falling out of the trees,'' Dr Perkins said. But fuel loads and soils were drying out, raising the prospects for fires and droughts later in the year if dry conditions persist, she said.

There may be political implications too, with signs that public worries about climate change are on the rise. One of the stand-out results from this year's Lowy Institute Poll is a further rise in demands for action on global warming ''even if this involves significant costs''. ''After five years of successive decline in concern … last year's poll showed the first upward trend in the number of Australians who see climate change as a 'serious and pressing problem,''' said Alex Oliver, the report's author. ''This trend continues,'' said Ms Oliver, who declined to elaborate before the 2014 report's release on June 4. ''Australians have strong views on the leadership role government should take.'' Former prime minister Julia Gillard viewed the breaking of Australia's drought in 2009 as sapping support for action on climate change. ''That made a big difference to public perception,'' Ms Gillard is quoted as saying in Philip Chubb's recently published book Power Failure. ''For a lot of people in the Australian community, the drought was climate change, climate change was the drought.''

That view may be tested as the likelihood of an El Nino increases the risk drought will return to south-eastern Australia. In El Nino years, inland regions get below-average rainfall. Loading ''The moment you start to warm up the Pacific Ocean as we are seeing now, you're increasingly stacking the odds over Australia towards dry conditions and warmer daytime temperatures,'' said David Jones, head of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology. The strength of El Nino may determine how much climate angst rises, said Andy Pitman, director of UNSW's ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. ''It wouldn't surprise me if people were getting concerned,'' he said. ''If we have a dry winter … the fire season next spring will make [last year's] seem trivial.''