A WAVE of warm and dry air will sweep over NSW between Thursday and Sunday as north-westerly winds carry air from the Red Centre towards south-eastern Australia.
Temperatures are forecast to reach the mid- to high-thirties in western NSW and over 30 degrees Celsius in the state's east in the coming days.
While this burst of late season warmth isn't likely to break records, some places should see the mercury climb five to 10 degrees above average for this time of year.
Unfortunately, the system that's causing the warm end to the week will also limit rainfall across NSW.
Earlier in March, a low pressure trough interacting with the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Esther caused widespread and heavy rain across much of the state.
This week, the tropics are experiencing a break in the monsoon and won't be providing any moisture-laden air to fuel rainfall in NSW.
Fortunately, the rain that has fallen across NSW in recent weeks helped ease the drought in some pockets of the state.
At the beginning to 2020, all of NSW was being affected by drought. By the middle of March, 9.3 per cent of the state was either classified as Non Drought or Recovering.
The remaining 90.9 per cent of the state was still in one of three drought categories: Drought Affected (58.6 per cent), Drought (22.9 per cent) and Intense Drought (9.2 per cent).
Another interesting event that will be happening this week is the March equinox.
At 2:50pm AEDT on Friday, the sun will be positioned directly above Earth's equator, meaning day and night will be roughly equal in length everywhere in Australia.
After Friday's equinox, the southern hemisphere will start to tilt further away from the sun, causing days to become progressively shorter than nights in Australia for the next three months.
Australia's shortest day and longest night of the year will occur in about three months on the winter solstice, which happens on June 21 in Australia this year.
However, we will have to wait six months before our days get longer than nights once again.
Meanwhile, parts of the Blue Mountains are having their wettest start to a year in 44 years. As of Monday, Katoomba had received 920.1mm of rain since the beginning of 2020.
This is the site's highest running total to this point in the year since 1976 and their sixth highest on record, with data available back to 1886.
Elsewhere in the mountains, Mount Boyce's year-to-date total of 741mm is its highest in records dating back to 1995, while Faulconbridge's 780.8mm beats records going back to at least 1986.
The bulk of this year's rain fell during February as a deep and slow-moving low pressure trough caused widespread rain in eastern NSW.
