The mainstream legacy media have done it again. As a collective, they have demonstrated how utterly untrustworthy they are as a source of weather information. They appear to be held captive by the contemporary currency of alarmist emotive narrative from the new breed of postmodernist scribes that warm the seats of the mastheads and television conglomerates.

Sydney breaks 165yo milestone after hottest four consecutive days in March on record, The Australian’s headline reads.

Sydney suffers through record heatwave not seen in 165 years, the always sensationalist Daily Mail trumpeted.

Not to be outdone, Sky News Australia heralded; Crowds flock to beaches across Sydney as the city swelters through another boiling day of 30 degree heat.

At least they parked the alleged record in the sub-heading; ‘Sydney has broken a 165-year-old record as the city faces another stifling day of temperatures well above 30 degrees.’

It all sounds pretty convincing. After all, a Sunshine Coast based NCA NewsWire journalist informed us that; ‘This is being caused by a low-intensity heatwave spreading across the region that also includes some parts of southeast Queensland.’

The Daily Mail added that, ‘Sydney has set a new weather record after temperatures soared above 30C for four consecutive days in March – the first time such an event has occurred in 165 years.’

The Sky News Australia contributor put it like this; ‘The Emerald City broke a 165-year-old weather record on Sunday after mercury level tipped above 30 degrees for a fourth consecutive day in March for the first time since 1878.’

Mark it down – one for the record books, Except…

None of it appears to be true. No record for March of four consecutive days above 30 degrees Celsius was broken.

Hang on a minute, I hear you query, how can so many news outlets get it so wrong?

Well let’s start with the facts sourced straight from the BoM’s Observatory Hill data for Sunday March 19, 2023 here: Daily Weather Review (bom.gov.au) and here, Latest Capital City Observations Sydney – Observatory Hill (bom.gov.au)  

As you can see from the first link, the maximum temperature for Observatory Hill, Sydney for the day was 28.9 degrees Celsius at 3:35 pm. This temperature, by the way, may have only been reached for a grand total of one second under current BoM temperature protocols. You may note in the second link that the highest one minute average temperature on the day was at 3:30 pm of 28.7 degrees Celsius.

So where did it all go wrong? This passage from the Australian’s story may give us the smoking gun: ‘The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts Sydney will reach a top of 30 degrees on Sunday, while Penrith will swelter in 40 degrees heat.’ Note the word forecasts in that passage. Most of these articles went live before 3 pm. To cut them some slack, the Bureau of Meteorology said that the last time Sydney recorded such high temperatures in March was in 1878, and then indicated it was a record never seen previously.

Or subsequently as it happens.

The story ran as the lead on several sites and some television crosses throughout the day proclaimed the same record had been broken. There was no excuse to continue to promulgating what amounted to fake news after the BoM issued its daily review at 5:02 pm on the day.

Now, no one is claiming it hasn’t been somewhat toasty in Sydney over the last week, especially in the Greater Western Sydney region where a lack of sea breeze and the amplifying urban heat island effect can really ramp things up. And yes, Sydney has been warmer than average for the beginning of March – after being colder than average for most of the last three years. However, let’s be clear here – the only historical data that extends back 165 years is that of Observatory Hill, not Penrith, not Campbelltown. The only temperature that could possibly justify such a record-breaking claim (four consecutive days above 30 degrees in March) is that at Observatory Hill and a top of 28.9 degrees Celsius simply does not cut it unless narrative is more important than facts to you.

Much of the MSM audience have now been fed a furphy and left with a false impression that Sunday broke a record when it demonstrably did not, and the media pushing that line has not put its hand up to correct itself and its audience, which is perhaps the real problem here.

I expect (perhaps naively these days) that the information I receive, especially when it forms the basis of a whole story with its glaring headline, to be as factually correct as possible. I don’t expect that if I go and do the most basic of leg work to fact check the claim that I can disprove it in about two minutes flat. That is the work of the so-called professional journalists, who get paid to do it. Nor do I want my so-called journalists spouting the talking points of government agencies such as the BoM without researching the claims themselves. In this instance, all they had to do was wait until 5 pm to know factually whether the record had been broken or not. Rather, they rushed to print earlier in the day while the record-breaking news remained a forecast, prior to any record having been set, and proclaimed it nonetheless.

Are MSM and the BoM more interested in narrative than facts? There seems to be an increased interest in narrative, especially if it aligns with the promulgation of a broader overarching agenda of a so-called climate crisis that frankly requires such fake news to sustain it.