Weather in Canberra in March

Prime time. March is about as good as Canberra gets. Highs average 24.8 °C, lows 12.5 °C, and rain falls on 10 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

March ranks 3 of 12 in Canberra. Only April scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain on 10 days, 2 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

The averages here are honest — no hidden extremes worth planning around. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest March day reached 35.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 4 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 79 mm — roughly 116% of the month's rain in one day.

March is moderately variable: 16 mm in the driest year against 215 mm in the wettest, around an average of 68 mm. Roughly two Marchs in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 4.2 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 70%.

How March sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 3 °C cooler than February, with April dropping another 4.1 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in March

12.4 hours of daylight, losing 1.1 hours across the month. That is between Canberra's extremes of 14.5 and 9.8 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 27.5 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

How busy it gets

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

March in Canberra versus nearby

If Canberra is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Katoomba is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.5 °C cooler, 2 days more rain. Bathurst is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain.

So: March is effectively as good as it gets here — 5 points behind April, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Canberra

See all twelve months in Canberra, or where else to go in March.