Unseasonably warm weather swept across the eastern states this weekend, with Sydney hitting 25.2C on Sunday, with high temperatures set to continue.
Parts of the country were expected to reach temperatures about 8C above normal for July on Sunday, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
The unusual warm winter weather comes as global temperatures shattered records this month, with July on track to be the hottest month ever recorded, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Melbourne didn’t quite make it to the forecast 19C on Sunday, but did equal the 18C it hit on a sunny Saturday.
Sydney hit 25.2C on Sunday afternoon, with even higher temperatures in the western suburbs, with Penrith and Bankstown reaching 26C by 2.30pm. On Saturday the city hit 22C, after 24.4C on Friday – the highest temperature so far this month.
In Brisbane, the temperature peaked at 25.7C, after a 25.4C day on Saturday – its warmest so far this month.
Meteorologist Angus Hines said the BoM’s maps showed temperature anomalies across the country.
“Parts of inland eastern Australia are pushing up to around eight degrees above normal, but we’re also seeing widespread areas of between two and six degrees above average through much of eastern Australia,” Hines said.
Temperatures were expected to stay above average into the week, with some places still up to 8C above July averages through to Wednesday.
“There’ll be no notable cooling for the country until Wednesday, when we get a cold burst of air into the south-west of the country behind a cold front, which will knock temperatures down through most of Western Australia and then they will spread across the southern states,” Hines said.
Tasmania will probably bear the brunt of increasingly strong wind conditions in the coming days, with damaging and possibly destructive wind warnings expected to be in place.
Gusty conditions were expected for other parts of the south-east with some wind warnings, particularly for coastal areas.
Hines said the Australian winter weather was “tricky to contextualise” with global conditions.
“Certainly it’s been extremely hot through large parts of the world. That’s not a direct cause of the temperatures here, it’s not like the heat has drifted south of the equator, but there are elements contributing to the weather we’re seeing here,” Hines said.
One of the main contributing elements to Australia’s winter warmth was the warm ocean conditions, Hines said.
Much higher than usual average surface ocean temperatures were being recorded around the world and were contributing to current local conditions, with particularly warm water off the Queensland coast.
