The mean temperature for Canberra’s winter is already 1.3 degrees warmer than the historical average, and a run of warmth in the dying days of the season could see that creep slightly higher still.

According to Rob Sharpe, a meteorologist from Fairfax-owned Weatherzone, apart from the chance of a handful of showers on Wednesday morning and overnight on Thursday, Canberra’s weather will be a vast improvement on last week, when the temperature didn’t get above 13 degrees from Monday to Friday.

“Temperatures are going to be reaching about 20 degrees for most days of this coming week,” he said.

“We’ve really got a warm air mass that over the last week moved to the northern parts of the country but this week it’s come back south now the polar winds have stopped blasting south eastern Australia.”

While these sorts of temperature fluctuations are the norm for this time of year, Mr Sharpe said it comes at the end of what has already been a particularly warm winter.

“I would definitely say it would be one of Canberra’s warmest winters on record…with far fewer cold days and cold nights than Canberra would typically see,” he said.

“We do expect to have periods of warmth at this time of year, as well as periods of cold air coming in. But it seems that for Canberra and much of NSW as well, we’re more likely to see more of the spells of warmth than we are the cold spells, particularly over the next couple of weeks.”

Mr Sharpe said the contrast was even more stark when you compared the number of mornings below zero degrees this winter – 26 in total – against the historical average of 43 mornings, or even the cold of last winter, when Canberrans woke up to freezing temperatures on 48 mornings.

And after three consecutive weeks of heavy snow falls which tripled the snow depth across the Australians Alps, Mr Sharpe said the ski resorts will also start seeing some more spring-like weather creep in.

“Now we’re seeing the warm air coming in, little bits of rain here and there as well. It’s going to mean that the ski fields are going to become a little bit more slushy. Thankfully there’s still going to be a really good base, so people will still be able to ski for a while, but it won’t be the winter wonderland,” he said.

“It seems that winter has had its run and spring is arriving with good pace, and it doesn’t look like we’ll see much in the way of strong cold fronts in the next little while.”

He said there will still be nights cold enough for snowmaking, but warned warmer days could see slushy conditions develop by the afternoon.

But the warmer-than-average winter won’t have any real impact on the opening of Floriade in a bit over two weeks, according to head gardener Andrew Forster.

“It’s all fine. The way Floriade is designed, it means that there will be flowers all the way through Floriade,” he said.

Mr Forster said there had been enough cool days to maintain normal flower growth, but said the warmer weather had been good for the annuals, and would be great for workers out over the next two weeks finishing off the garden beds in preparation for the September 14 opening.