Australia Weather News

Melbourne may have avoided a scorching 40-degree day this summer, but warm weather is going to continue into autumn, the Bureau of Meteorology says.

While much of eastern Australia and northern Victoria sweltered through some trying conditions — including two consecutive 46-degree days in Mildura — Melbourne did not have one day that reached 40C.

Scott Williams from the Bureau of Meteorology said Melbourne's summer was deceptively warmer-than-average.

"It would appear to people that it wasn't a particularly hot summer, given we didn't have extremes," he said.

"We didn't have long runs of days above 30 either. There was a run of four days early in January, two of which got about 35.

"But generally it's just been a couple of hotter days followed by reasonable cool spells in between.

"So it certainly felt like a mild summer, even though when you look at the figures across the three months we stack up fractionally above average for Melbourne for temperature."

On December 28, Melbourne sweltered through its second hottest night on record, with 27.4C recorded at 12:30am.

'Indian summer' on the cards for March

And in some more pleasant news, those dreaded cold days may be a little while off.

Mr Williams said Melbourne was likely to experience warmer-than-average conditions in Autumn.

"March is quite often a warm month, and we quite often can get decent runs above 30," he said.

"So that means we can look forward to somewhat of an Indian summer further into Autumn and perhaps some reasonable runs of pleasant, warm days."

The last time Melbourne had a 40-degree-free summer was 2014-15.