Australia set its hottest day on record on Tuesday as a deadly heatwave continues to grip the country, fuelling fires and prompting widespread health warnings.

The average maximum temperature across the country on Tuesday was 40.9C (105.62F) - tipping it past the record set in January 2013.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said this could be beaten again on Wednesday.

Preliminary results suggest that the 17th December was Australia's hottest day on record at 40.9 ºC, with the average maximum across the country as a whole, exceeding the previous record of 40.3 ºC on the 7th January 2013. https://t.co/TKwWBuFPgJ pic.twitter.com/xOFpokoXos — Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) December 18, 2019

Firefighters try to contain furious inferno in Australia as heatwave continues.

Meteorologist Diana Eadie said: "This hot air mass is so extensive, the preliminary figures show that yesterday [Tuesday] was the hottest day on record in Australia, beating out the previous record from 2013 and this heat will only intensify."

The small outback town of Oodnadatta in South Australia is forecast to peak at around 47C (116.6F) on Wednesday, according to the BOM.


It will make the remote town, which has a population of around 200 people, one of the hottest places on Earth.

The unrelenting heat in the small town is forecast to last all week, and is expected to fall just shy of the 50.7C (123.26F) peak temperature recorded there in 1960 - a long-standing national record.

Image: People cross a hazy street as temperatures creep up to 50C

Image: A dog has some water in Lithgow

Dean Narramore, from the Bureau of Meteorology, said it was "incredible".

He added: "These national average maximum temperature records - we normally only break them by just a very small margin, but we broke the previous one back in 13 January by a point six of a degree.

"And there's a good chance that we could see that fall again today and maybe more likely tomorrow as well as we see huge areas of the country expecting not only above 40 degree temperatures, but also widespread areas, about 45 degrees through many parts of western New South Wales, almost all of South Australia, and then parts of the Northern Territory and southwest Queensland as well.

"So an incredible pool of hot air sitting right across the country at the moment."

Resident Hayley Nunn: "It's just another very hot day.

"People say to me they love summer. If you love summer, come out and experience this because you will not love it."

Image: A firefighter conducts back-burning measures in Central Coast, New South Wales, earlier this month

Image: Fires have been ravaging Australia's east for weeks

At Fauna rescue centre, workers have been giving water to bats to help them cope with the drought.

Volunteer Suzanne Pope said: "Bats fly out at night, but there's probably not very much food out there because of the drought.

"There's not a lot of water out there, they do skim in the river, but some people have been pulling bats out of the river this morning. So it's just dreadful and it's going to get worse and worse.

"The stress is going to build up. There are already some dead ones, apparently hanging in trees and by the end of the week, they'll be a lot of dead bats."

Image: Suzanne Pope and another rescue worker giving a bat water

The hot weather, which comes in the first month of summer, has stretched across the continent and fuelled fires that have been ravaging Australia's east for weeks.

Fire authorities in New South Wales said on Wednesday there were 100 fires, half of them not contained.

Six people have died in the fires, while more than 680 homes have been destroyed and around three million acres of bushland burned.