Shepparton swelters through hottest March in at least 50 years

-      by Shepparton News reporter Cameron Whitely

Shepparton sweltered last month, experiencing its hottest March for at least 50 years.

A heatwave at the start of March affected much of Victoria including Shepparton, which had four days over 39°C in the first nine days of the month.

The city saw temperatures above 30°C for the first 17 days of March and only once for the whole month did the maximum daily temperature dip below 20°C.

Despite cooler temperatures in the latter part of March, the average maximum temperature for the month was 30.2°C — the first time the 30°C mark had been exceeded for at least five decades.

The Bureau of Meteorology started taking observations from Shepparton Airport in 1996 and before that, at a station at Lemnos with BoM statistics for that site dating back to 1965.

BoM senior forecaster Rod Dickson said a heatwave at the start of March had seen many records broken across the state.

‘‘A number of other stations in the north of Victoria broke record runs above temperature thresholds,’’ he said.

‘‘Looking at Shepparton, there were seven consecutive days about 37°C.

‘‘It cooled down a little bit after that but Shepparton was still recording temperatures between 30, 32 and 33 until about the 17th.

‘‘We had a strong cold front go through on the 18th, which cooled the temperature down across the state and displaced the hot air that was sitting over northern Victoria.

‘‘Generally there were milder conditions over the second half of the month but the extreme heatwave at the start of the month did have an effect on the average temperature and we ended up with a number of records.’’

Not only was March hot, it was also dry, with only 28.4mm of rainfall, with 24.6mm recorded on the 18th.

But the figure was significantly more than last March, which had only 3.8mm of rain.