I could quite fancy the idea of a heat wave at the moment. Last weekend's glorious weather already feels like a thousand years ago, and the coming weekend isn't showing many signs of shaping up promisingly - at the moment.

However, the shining sun has been extremely apparent in California once again. The spring heat wave continues here, and temperatures just keep on climbing higher and higher. On Monday, the day's maximum in San Francisco was 32 Celsius, and Santa Maria had a high of 38 Celsius (which is even higher than our record-breaking temperature from last summer). The average temperatures for the end of April are 17 and 19 Celsius respectively.

Soaring temperatures into the 40s Celsius set off a fair few thunderstorms in northwest Thailand. Mae Sot had 37mm or rain falling in 12 hours. Central Mexico too has seen a similar weather situation with 40mm of rain being dumped in the city of Monterrey in just 6 hours.

Kangnung, in South Korea, usually gets around 75mm in April. A slow moving depression has so far dropped a massive 151mm of rain here in the last 36 hours, which is over twice the monthly average.

But heavy rain has been rather useful for some. Cooktown is situated on the Queensland coast of Australia. The eastern half of the continent is still recovering from severe droughts from last year, so the 37mm which fell in 6 hours here has been welcome. Add this to the previous day's downpours, and a total of 123mm has been totted up in 36 hours. This has alone managed to give over half the monthly rainfall of 220mm.

Weather News from the last five days:
28/04/2004
27/04/2004
26/04/2004
25/04/2004
24/04/2004

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