On this day in 1967, The Canberra Times reported on the literal electricity in the air. The low humidity and warm temperatures were causing static shock all over the ACT, including stopping couples from holding hands or kissing in their metal-framed cars.
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The Canberra atmosphere had been giving many of its citizens a shocking time during the week. Door handles, chairs, car doors and even kissing couples had become charged with static electricity in the abnormally low humidity which had occurred since the weekend. Contact with them, particularly by people wearing rubber-soled shoes, had resulted in electric shocks ranging from minor to moderately severe.
Canberra's average humidity at 3pm was 39 per cent but on the Thursday, it was only 20 per cent.
A Bureau of Meteorology spokesman explained in average humidity static electricity did not build up as much as in dry conditions and it did not concentrate. Bureau staff had been as uncomfortable as everyone else.
Many of them had been receiving shocks from their chairs and door knobs.
A bad case was that of a married couple who had given up kissing each other in the car because of the electric shocks from the car itself.
The weather bureau said they would be able to go back to kissing when the dry northerly winds subsided and were moderated by moisture-bearing north-easterlies.
