Julia Creek now has the honour of holding the Queensland record for earliest 40-degree day of the season. At 3:47pm on Thursday, September 12th, the Northwest town set the new record, beating the previous record by one day. The previous record was held by Century Mine in the Gulf Country, when it reached 40.3 degrees on September 13th in 2010. The hottest area of the state, the Northwest and Gulf Country districts, has been steadily heating up since last Friday, warming a degree or two each day. With help from westerly winds and plenty of sunshine much of the region is now reaching the high thirties, about five degrees above average for this time of year. And the next few days are looking similarly hot with a good chance for several centres hitting 40 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday before a cooler southerly change arrives. The cooler change is not looking very strong, so the region should still heat up to the high thirties each day. This change and another change later in the week will have more of an affect further south. They will deliver the first rain since July to parts of south-west and central-west Queensland, including Birdsville, Quilpie, Longreach, Charleville and Roma. It is not just the west which is experiencing unseasonable heat. Some of it has been drawn to the east of the state by northwesterly and westerly winds. Rockhampton has just had record heat for this early in the season, 36.1 degrees on Thursday. In 75 years of records the Capricornia town had only been this hot as early as the 22nd of September, in 1943. There will only be slight relief from the heat during the next few days as sea breezes slowly penetrate further inland. Rockhampton can expect to reach about 35 degrees on Friday and 34 degrees over the weekend before cooling to the low thirties early next week. Many residents would be glad to hear that there are even a chance of thunderstorms later next week as humidity builds and a low pressure trough moves in.