Weather in Melbourne in March

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, March is the one. Highs average 24 °C, lows 14.4 °C, and rain falls on 7 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

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

Rain on 7 days, 1 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

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 4 days top 30 °C — hot spells arrive, but they break. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest March day reached 37.2 °C and the coldest night fell to 9.1 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 41 mm — roughly 89% of the month's rain in one day.

March is moderately variable: 17 mm in the driest year against 97 mm in the wettest, around an average of 46 mm. Roughly two Marchs in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 11.5 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 68%.

How March sits in the year

The month is on the way down: 1.6 °C cooler than February, with April dropping another 3.5 °C. The first week and the last are not the same trip.

Daylight in March

12.4 hours of daylight, losing 1.2 hours across the month. That is between Melbourne's extremes of 14.8 and 9.6 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 19.2 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

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

March in Melbourne versus nearby

If Melbourne is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Ballarat is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Bendigo is close enough to be a coin toss — 2.5 °C warmer, 2 days less rain.

So: March is effectively as good as it gets here — 0 points behind January, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Melbourne

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