Slovenia has been experiencing a spell of unseasonably warm sunny weather with several records broken over the past weekend, including the earliest 30 degrees Celsius on record.

The mercury climbed to 30C in the village of Osilnica in the south of the country on 7 April, the highest on record for the first half of April.

Before that Slovenia recorded its earliest 30C in the year in Črnomelj, also in the south, on 23 April in 2018, according to the Environment Agency.

The agency said that some other records were broken on 7 April, including at Kredarica, the country's highest weather station at an altitude of 2,515, just below Mt Triglav, Slovenia's highest peak.

The mercury climbed to 11.5 degrees Celsius at Kredarica, up from the previous record for the first half of April of 10.1 degrees, measured in 2012.

In the Logarska Valley, temps reached 26.8 degrees, 1.2 degrees over the previous record for early April.

It was hot across the country, with 29.8C recorded in Trbovlje in central Slovenia. Record temperatures were broken in places such as Idrija in the west, the Vršič mountain pass and Jezersko in the north.

Back in 2021, it was snowing in most of the country on the same day.

However, even though it was hot this Sunday, major cities and towns did not see record high temperatures.

Meteorologist Jure Cedilnik told the news portal N1 this was because of a temperature inversion and a mixing of warm and hot air.

The high temperatures were due to a bubble of warm air at high altitudes. "It's due to a deep cyclonic zone over the North Atlantic or North Sea that pushed warm air from the Sahara here," Cedilnik said.

After two more days of daytime highs hovering in the upper twenties, these are forecast to drop to 20 or just above in the second half of the week.