It was a natural occurrence, nothing unusual about how warm nights come about, just how different circumstances coincide determines the degree of warmth of cold. If you check these satellite images of water vapour in the atmosphere you will see that the day previous was clear allowing high incoming solar radiation and during the night a band of cloud, showing on the images, passed over the state trapping the heat and preventing it from radiating off. Was talking to someone in Mildura last night and he was commenting on the warm night. I asked him if he noticed if it was overcast during the night, which he had done. He had noticed it but hadn't connected it with the warm night. This surprised me as I thought that something so basic was known by everybody, but not so it appears. Re the images, note that the times are UTC, Melbourne is plus 10 hours. http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009321WV1800.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009321WV2100.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV0000.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV0300.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV0600.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV0900.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV1200.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV1500.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV1800.gif http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/2009322WV2100.gif
