{"id":222273,"date":"2026-01-07T23:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T23:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/222273\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T23:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T23:35:10","slug":"roads-melt-as-temps-soar-but-wa-locals-keep-their-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/222273\/","title":{"rendered":"Roads melt as temps soar but WA locals keep their cool"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the town famed as Australia’s hottest place to live, the locals have learned to “lean into” the extreme nature of their everyday weather.<\/p>\n

Marble Bar, in the Western Australia’s Pilbara around 1474km northeast of Perth, is one of many country centres grappling with the worst heatwave since the summer of 2019-20.<\/p>\n

Extended heatwaves are common in the town, where the record temperature was 49.3C in December 2023.<\/p>\n

“We deal with it for six, seven months of the year – it’s tough going,” Marble Bar Community Resource Centre coordinator Bazz Harris said.<\/p>\n

“Most of the locals lean into it – people will walk 100 metres down to the general store and they make sure they’ve got a hat and a bottle of water.<\/p>\n

“The trick is to get a cool night’s sleep, get six seven hours in a cool environment at night, and you can deal with the day.”<\/p>\n

Since January 1, the town has not recorded a daytime temperature under 42C, and on Wednesday, it was above 47C.<\/p>\n

Last summer, the town had a 26-day stretch of maximums over 43C, and during its most famous heatwave in 1923-24, there were 160 consecutive days over 37.8C.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got six generations of people who have called it home, but for the ring-ins, which is me and everyone that runs a business in town, it’s different,” Harris said. <\/p>\n

“It’s hard to keep staff here. People come up and take jobs, and when they get those string of 12-15 days of 40C-plus, then you quickly figure out who’s gonna be hanging around and who’s gonna go.”<\/p>\n

The massive iron ore trucks used in the region also face challenges in the heat, he said. <\/p>\n

“When the trucks are loaded with four trailers chock-full of iron ore, they actually melt the tar and dig the road up. It’s crazy to see that \u2026 the roads definitely do melt, that’s an actual thing.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A bush fire burning in Mount Lawson State Park near Thologolong, Victoria. (Source: NSW Rural Fire Service) (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n

There are heatwave warnings across the majority of South Australia, Victoria, and NSW<\/a>, as temperatures soar up to 15C above average.<\/p>\n

In Port Augusta, at the head of the SA’s Spencer Gulf, mayor Linley Shine said the community was “very used to” extreme weather and knew how to handle it.<\/p>\n

“I could get in the car right now and go for a drive in town and our main CBD area would be very, very quiet, because people here know how to prepare for these types of events,” she said.<\/p>\n

The city, famous for being the driest city in the driest state on the driest continent, reached 46C on Wednesday, with 47C forecast for Thursday and 44 on Friday.<\/p>\n

Like the Pilbara, a telltale sign of the extreme heat was the impact on local roads.<\/p>\n

“It’s very, very common to start seeing the bitumen just melt, they call them ‘bleeding roads’,” Linley said.<\/p>\n

“We’re very used to this as a community, this happens every year – the big, important thing is taking care of our vulnerable people and checking on them which our community is very good at doing.<\/p>\n

“People here are tough, they’re pretty resilient, and we look out for each other as well. We are a really good, kind, caring community, especially in times of need like this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the town famed as Australia’s hottest place to live, the locals have learned to “lean into” the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,42,43,40,38,41,39,3393],"class_list":["post-222273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-weather-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}