Lee gets it hopelessly wrong again. (I can't wait to see how he weasels his way out of this one)
Lee you do realise that 18.7 and 25.9 which you have quoted are the average for all years.

The January 2017 average is 29.6 max and 21.6 min
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/201701/html/IDCJDW2124.201701.shtml

So yes Sydney has just had it's hottest January on record

Lee has a Masters in Obfuscation, Mind Clouding, and Misdirection from the Trump university of alternative facts.

NSW is burning up:

http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/3/2/z/w/image.imgtype.articleLeadwi...

Records have been broken along the east coast of Australia amid multiple heatwaves which included 11 days when the temperature topped 30C and five days above 35C in Sydney in January. This broke not only all previous records for the month but for any month since records began in 1858.


January was hottest month on record in Sydney and Brisbane, says weather bureau
Read more
The stream of days over 35C is brutal enough, but it is the nights that are driving people quite mad. To butcher TS Eliot:

I have seen the mercury of my thermometer flicker,

And I have seen the eternal footman hold my sheets drenched in sweat at 3am, and snicker,

And in short, I was too hot.

These days I arrive at work at 6am covered in sweat. I have been lucky to sleep more than four hours at a time. I have given shelter to my friend who has no air conditioning and we have all camped in my living room on the night it was 35C at 1am. I have seen babies being held up to air conditioning vents for relief. I have gone swimming in the harbour at 9pm (that was actually quite nice).

Other Guardian Australia staff have found themselves at the end of their tether as well.

My normally quite sound environmental ethics have been thrown out the window – wound down only for this purpose because I have the air conditioning on full blast, obviously. I leave the air conditioning on all day and night, with the fan on to boot. I drive in an air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned Westfield shopping centre where I make meaningless purchases, all the while being angry that this heat must be a real boon for the expensive shops in Westfield. I skip yoga class because it’s too hot to go, I can’t go to the beach because it’s too hot, I just lie about in bed because the bedroom is the only room in the house with air conditioning. I am generally quite cranky. Spending hours on end contemplating the irony of climate change causing this heat while making it worse with my non-stop air conditioning is just generally doing my head in. When will it end? – Gabrielle Jackson

...

The heat broke me and I ran the air conditioner all night for the first time ever. I don’t feel good about this but it’s now 24C inside the house and I intend not to go outside ever. It makes me worry that my commitment not to waste energy is compromised so easily.

But an old tip we used to employ when I was a kid and didn’t have the option of wasting power on air conditioning and didn’t have a pool was to have a large bucket of water in the bath that we would periodically walk up to and dunk our entire heads into. That was actually really refreshing. – Miles Martignoni

This January’s average temperature sits at 29.2 degrees, far above the overall January average (since 1859) of 25.9 degrees. It seems above-average summer temperatures have become a way of life in Sydney.

Sydney in January 2017: the warmest month on record
January 2017 was the warmest on record for Sydney. Every station in the metropolitan area recorded its highest January mean temperature on record and most stations (including Sydney Observatory Hill) also broke records for mean maximum and minimum temperatures. Record-high numbers of warm nights and the equal-fewest cool days were recorded at Sydney Observatory Hill, while stations in western Sydney experienced record numbers of 40 °C days. Rainfall was below average across the city.

A very hot January
Daytime temperatures were well above average across Sydney during January, with several stations, including Observatory Hill, recording their warmest January on record.

At Observatory Hill, the January mean temperature of 25.6 °C was the highest on record for any month

Minimum temperatures were also record warm across the city, with all Sydney stations recording their warmest January mean temperature on record

At Observatory Hill, eleven days reached 30 °C (average 3 days) and five days reached 35 °C  (average 1 day), in both cases the second-highest number on record behind January 1896

Only three days failed to reach 25 °C, the equal-fewest on record with January 1994 (average 13 days)

In western Sydney, Richmond recorded seven days above 40 °C and Parramatta recorded five days above 40 °C, breaking the records set in January 2003

Five nights remained above 24 °C, more than double the previous record of 2 hot nights in 2010, with 25 nights remaining above 20 °C, the highest number on record (average 9 nights)

Several stations recorded their warmest January night on record on either the 14th, 18th, or 31st

Temperatures were particularly warm at Observatory Hill on the morning of the 18th, with record-warm temperatures of 31.2 °C at 6am and 36.5 °C at 9am

THE next few days are going to be unbearable for large swathes of the country as an extreme heatwave sees temperatures soar.

Parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria are expected to cop it the worst for the next four to five days, with temperatures predicted in the high 30s to possibly mid-40 degree mark.

The dire forecast saw the website of the popular weather tracker Higgins Storm Chasing crash overnight, as tens of thousands of social media users tried to get as much information as they could.

The looming spikes in temperature is also backed up by Bureau of Meteorology predictions for across regional Queensland New South Wales: see photo gallery below.

At the time of writing, it has nearly 23,000 shares, 10,000 likes and saw over 200,000 website views over the course of 20 minutes - it's clear people are concerned.