This is the Friendsfister Debating Society. I'm John Batchelor, and I'm in Southern New England,

where it is moderating after a very cold and bitter and icy February. We're days from springtime.

I go now to my good colleague and Ozwatcher, Jeremy Zackas, he's in New South Wales, where it's the end of summer

coming fall, and it's extremely, extremely hot for New South Wales. There's more. Jeremy, a good day to you.

I report that no longer 7 degrees at 5 a.m. Fahrenheit. Now it's 37 degrees at 5 a.m.

Fahrenheit. And that is very comforting. During the day, it reaches 50 or can touch 60 Fahrenheit.

In other words, we're having a wonderful springtime. You are at the end of your summer and something's happened.

What is the weather right now and what's it been last week?

Good day to you, Jeremy.

You know, John, yes, something has certainly happened here and something a little bit unexpected.

We are getting a last blast of summer.

In fact, we are getting temperatures that are hotter than we've had

in probably the last decade at the centre point of March. And when I say hot, you're talking about

getting above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so getting above freezing there. We're talking about

temperatures daily now where we're getting around about 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a maximum temperature.

In fact, as I'm speaking to you now, well before midday, we're already crossing into around

about 90 degrees Fahrenheit heading to about 100, 105 degrees here in Sydney alone.

And this is really, really surprising because you may remember only just last week, John,

we were talking about a cyclone up the Queensland coast

that came on shore dumping a lot of rain and a fair bit of cool weather down the eastern coast here.

We were actually talking about getting cool weather possibly by the end of this week.

Well, it didn't happen.

...