We didn't enjoy the best of weather during April, with mini Beasts from the East - we lost count of how many there were - and generally pissy rain throughout.
Plenty were crying out for a bit of sunshine, but spare a thought for the people of Nawabshah in southern Pakistan, where scientists claim the highest ever April temperature was recorded. As in, the hottest temperature that it has ever been, at any point in April, ever. Scorchio.
According to Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist with Meteo France, the French equivalent of the Met Office, the temperature of 50.2C that was recorded at Nawabshah on Monday was a world record for this time of year and the highest ever recorded in Asia at any time of year.
Another expert, Christopher Burt, agreed that it might have been the hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere in April. Burt, who wrote the book Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book and thus probably knows a thing or two about mad weather conditions, described it as the hottest 'in modern records for any location on Earth'.
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There was a recording of 51 degrees Celsius in Santa Rosa, Mexico, in 2011, which Burt called 'questionable because the site was a regional observation site and not of first order'.
Kapikian suggests that the previous record holder was the town of Larkana, also in southern Pakistan, not far to the north of Nawabshah. I just googled it now to find out where it was an according to Google Maps, its a relatively comfortable 43 degrees in Nawabshah today.
Nawabshah is no small place, too: it is roughly the size of Glasgow. It sits around 100 miles inland from the Indian Ocean and the climate is known for being harsh - they have an average temperature above 30 degrees for nine months of the year and over 40 every day in the summer.
50.2C is hot, though it is some way of the hottest ever, ever recorded on Earth. The current record was at the appropriately named Furnace Creek in California's Death Valley desert, which topped out at 56.7C in July 1913.
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To put it into context, the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK was at Faversham in Kent in August 2003, when the mercury tipped 38.5C - positively chilly to Nawabshahians.
Regardless, it's bloody hot. I was in a car with no air conditioning, driving the ten hours from Sydney to Melbourne in 45C in early January - a day that Penrith, in Sydney, was the hottest place on Earth and Joe Root had to stop batting in the Ashes because of heat stroke - with a hangover and it was one of the worst days of my life.
My Caramello Koala (the Aussie Freddo) melted on the roof at a service station.
Still, better than Manchester in January I suppose.
Topics: Weather, News, Pakistan, India