Australia Weather News

Dozens of grass and bushfires are burning across NSW as a cool change spreads across the state after a day of scorching temperatures.

There are 62 grass and bushfires currently burning across the state, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS).

A fire at Northmead, in Sydney's west, damaged a property before being brought under control.

Melinda Kee, who lives in a different Northmead home, said she was not prepared to evacuate if the fire danger had increased.

"I came flying out the house to try and work out whether or not we should pack up what is most valuable," she said.

"If we had to evacuate we wouldn't be prepared."

NSW Police Minister David Elliott warned people not to be complacent about the risk of bushfires.

"Here we go again. We have of course seen the first weekend of really significant bushfire activity," Mr Elliott said.

"I want to make sure the message is very, very clear. What we are seeing this weekend is pretty consistent with what we will potentially see over the course of this fire season.

"We cannot fall into a false sense of security. The community out there, unfortunately, thinks after the last season we are not at risk of bushfire.

"The reality is 90 per cent of the state is still untouched by bushfire."

RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers warned the rapid spread of grass fires offered a different threat to previous bushfire seasons.

"It's a very different season," he said.

"What we haven't had for the last few years is grass because we have been in a drought so there's been no grass to obviously grow or burn. That's changed significantly.

"These grass fires are quite dangerous."

The BOM's Helen Kirkup said a cool southerly change will see temperatures drop.

The temperature at Sydney Airport has dropped from 35C to 26C in 20 minutes.

November heat records in parts of NSW were broken on Sunday as the mercury climbed across the state.

In Sydney, Olympic Park reached 41.6C, beating its previous record from 2015 of 40.8C.

Stations at Broken Hill airport, Albury airport, Griffith airport, Shellharbour airport, Narrandera airport and Yanco Agricultural Institute all broke their November records with temperatures over 40C.

Ms Kirkup said hot weather records had been broken overnight.

"There were a few places that recorded record maximum temperatures, as in the hottest November night-time for a while," she said.

"Sydney Observatory Hill only went down to 25.3 degrees around 1:30am and that was the coolest it made it to all night and that's because of a fairly strong westerly wind that's been dragging warm, hot air across the region for parts of yesterday, right overnight and that will continue today."

The previous highest November night temperature at Observatory Hill was 24.8 degrees in 1967.

"Another place, Cobar, only went down to 28.9 which is a November record for them and that's a station that has 59 years of data, so quite a long record there," Ms Kirkup said.

Hundreds of people flocked to Manly Beach before 8:00am this morning when the temperature was already over 30C.

With a high overnight minimum, there was no reprieve from the heatwave on Saturday night.