Sydney just registered its hottest March in 165 years of records, with the first month of autumn coming in warmer than all of summer.

Despite a chilly start to Friday (minimum temperature of 14.3ºC, 3.3ºC below average), Sydney managed to reach 25.7ºC shortly after lunchtime.

This was enough to push the city’s average maximum temperature for the month up to 27.6ºC, beating the previous March record of 27.1ºC from 2006.*

What makes Sydney’s March heat even more impressive is that it followed a relatively mild summer. Based on daytime temperatures, March was hotter than December, January and February, which has only happened five other times in records dating back to 1859.

In addition to being a hot month in Sydney, it was also the city’s driest March in 13 years. Sydney’s Observatory Hill weather station received just 54 mm of rain this month, well below the long-term average of 132 mm.

* Sydney’s official March maximum temperature record prior to 2023 was 27.1ºC in 2006. This was recorded at the now-discontinued Observatory Hill weather station site, which opened in 1858 and closed in 2020. A new recording site opened at Observatory Hill in 2017, less than 200 metres away from the old site, and took over as Sydney’s official weather station in October 2020. In March 2018, this new site (unofficial at the time) recorded a mean maximum temperature of 27.4ºC.