THE south-west was hit with an unseasonably warm autumn day with beach fronts filling up as temperatures soared into the 30s across the district on Tuesday.
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Warrnambool's 32.3 degree day marked the hottest in the month, blowing April's 20.4 degree maximum average out of the water.
Port Fairy climbed up to 33.4 degrees, Mortlake 32.7 and Portland 31.5. In-land, Hamilton reached 31.7, behind the state top of 35.2 in the Mallee's Walpeup.
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Peter Newham said the heatwave was unusual.
"Warrnambool has reached 31 and could sneak higher; its quite unusual to get temperatures this high after the middle of April," he told The Standard on Tuesday.
"We had a maximum of 31.3 in Warrnambool three years ago on April 20, and got to a maximum of 31 at the very end of April back in 2005 - so we do get into the high 20s to low 30s in April at times."
The BoM forecaster said the heatwave affected most of the states' west.
"Temperatures were 8-12 degrees above average across Western Victoria, which is due to hot air sweeping in inland from the north.
While it's difficult to determine the exact cause of a temperature spike, climate change could not be ruled out, the weather expert said.
"It's really hard to pin one particular event down to it, but it's evident that there is warming occurring and extremes are becoming more likely with climate change," he said.
"We'll continue to get more of these unseasonably hot conditions, and are more likely to get records broken."
The hot day didn't break Warrnambool's overall record, with 35.6 degrees in 2014 the highest on record for April.
The remainder of the week remains unusually warm in Warrnambool, with a maximum of 27 for Wednesday, 17 for Thursday, 20 for Friday and a pleasant weekend rounding out to 26 on Saturday and 25 on Sunday.
