It's not any of the individual temperatures forecast for Melbourne over the next week or so that is exceptional, it's the number of consecutive days at these temperatures that is.
In most years we usually get at least a few days over 30C and sometimes they can get into the mid to high 30s, especially in the first half of the month. There have been a handful of days recorded over 40C in Melbourne for March but this is very rare. Long stretches of high 20s to low 30s are not all that uncommon but not 32C-35C. As far as the models go I can't see a day above 36C or 37C at this stage and this is set to occur in around 7 days.
There may be sea breezes around Melbourne at stages during this heatwave, although as we saw just a couple of weeks ago this does not necessarily mean that maximum temperatures will remain below 30C in the CBD on any of those days.
To be completely honest, on current model outputs I am expecting every day between tomorrow and around about next Tuesday to be above 30C in Melbourne. That would mean 9 days above 30C and would break the all time yearly record for most consecutive days above 30C. Wednesday could easily end up 30C too as EC has the change moving through late, although this is way off in model la la land so I won't put too much emphasis on it.
Models can change of course, as we all know. There could be an unexpected break down of the blocking pattern before the record is reached, but I strongly doubt it as models usually pick these sort of patterns pretty well, especially when all models are pretty much mirroring each other.
It's a real kick in the face as it will bring back the bushfire risk and plants will go back into stress again by the end of it. If we had gone back into a more normal pattern with changes coming through then that would have been the end more or less of the fire season and we could have still had a nice Autumn with things greening up a bit and a nice tree colour display. At this rate I doubt that we will see this sort of thing this Autumn.