Jackets off on the weekend! The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting temperatures in Canberra bumping up to 21 degrees. This compares with the usual maximums for August of 13 to 16 degrees.
With the official start of spring less than two weeks away, it will feel that winter really is on the way out, but bureau weather forecaster Jiwon Park warned that some cold snaps may return.
And the current highs are still not record-breakers. On August 30, 1982, Canberrans sweltered in 24 degrees.
"For Sunday and Monday, the forecast temperature will be about seven or eight degrees higher than the August average daytime maximum temperature," Mr Park said.
Even though the weekend may feel like a heat wave, it will not technically be one. The Bureau only makes a heatwave warning in high summer when the temperatures get dangerous. Spikes in temperature in winter aren't dangerous.
All the same, the cause of the upcoming blast of heat is the high temperature in central and northern Australia. Winds from the north will blow the heat in.
But the Bureau warns that jackets off at the weekend doesn't mean: stick them away in the back of the cupboard quite yet.
"It's a bit early to say that winter's over," meteorologist Jiwon Park said. "Next week or the week after, we may see another cold front and that may bring temperature relief," though he said that there was not one on the horizon at the moment.
"Temperature relief" means cooler weather so even the official start of spring on September 1 may still feel less than spring-like warm.
But the signs of spring are there. "It certainly seems that the early wattle around Canberra started a couple of weeks earlier than usual," botanist Ian Fraser who has observed nature in the ACT for decades said.
He also thought that Hardenbergia - those purple flowers which scramble up poles and fences - were blooming early. For Mr Fraser, spring has sprung when it feels like spring - and that's now.
Magpies started swooping at about the same time this year as last. The first reported swoop this year was on July 27 ("I was not expecting to be swooped three times, a tap on the helmet each go; very noisy,", the cyclist in Bruce said).
