Melbourne: Millions of Australians were warned to prepare for severe weather conditions on Wednesday as heatwaves and damaging winds swept across the country.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) on Wednesday morning issued severe weather warnings for damaging winds in the east coast states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, as well as South Australia (SA), and heatwave warnings for Queensland and the Northern Territory (NT) in northern Australia.

Maximum temperatures were forecast to exceed 35 degrees Celsius along NSW's densely-populated east coast on Wednesday and hit 39 degrees Celsius in the state capital of Sydney, which would break the city's October record of 38.2 degrees Celsius in 2004.

The severe heat and forecast damaging winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour prompted

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