Sydney weather: Warmth rolls on after record March as fire season extended
Sydney’s balmy start to April will continue for most of the coming week but those warm and mostly dry conditions have also prompted the Rural Fire Service to extend the fire season for parts of the state’s north.
Records for March heat were set for Sydney, NSW and Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Friday and Saturday will be “spectacular” in Sydney with tops of 27-29 degrees before a weak cold front arrives, bring a day of drizzle and cloud on Sunday before the mercury climbs again, Rob Sharpe, a meteorologist with Weatherzone, said.
Penrith, in the city’s west, normally gets about one day over 30 degrees in April. The current bureau forecasts point to at least four in the first week of the month.
“It’s odd to see so many days being warm for this time of year,” Mr Sharpe said.
Unusual warmth, though, has become more the norm, with the city clocking its second-warmest March on record, the bureau said in its monthly report released on Friday.
Sydney broke a slew of records last month, including the highest average minimum temperatures and seven nights when the mercury stayed above 22 degrees.
A spell of wetter weather in the second half of the month meant the city’s daytime temperatures came in only fourth-highest for March. The city, though, broke records for the most days in a row of 24, 25, 26 and 27 degrees “reflecting a prolonged period of warmth in coastal NSW”, the bureau said.
The abnormal heat is hardly a one-month wonder. The October-March period in Sydney has been two degrees warmer than average for maximum temperatures, making it the hottest such period in more than 150 years of records, Acacia Pepler, a climatologist at the bureau, said.
It was also equal warmest for minimums, with overnight temperatures running 1.8 degrees above average for the six months.
Nationally, last month was the hottest March for mean temperatures, eclipsing the previous record set in 1986.
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