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Will Australia see another tropical cyclone in 2021?

  There are early signs that tropical cyclone activity could pick up in the Australian region between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.  We have already seen three tropical cyclones in the Australian region since the start of the cyclone season on November...

Antarctica posts 2nd smallest November sea ice extent on record

  Amid our planet’s fourth warmest November in 142 years of records, Antarctica’s sea ice extent dipped to its second smallest November level in the satellite era. Despite the cooling effect of La Niña, the global surface temperature in...

Early look at Australia’s Christmas forecast

  A hot air mass building over Australia this week will set the stage for a quintessentially hot and sweaty Christmas in some parts of the country. While large areas of Australia were kept unusually cool during November by...

Record-breaking run of positive SAM set to continue

  New data has revealed that the Southern Hemisphere just saw a record-breaking run of positive Southern Annular Mode (SAM) values, and this run is set to continue until at least the end of the year. Here’s what that...

Could Australia hit 50C this week?

  However, once the hot air spreads to low-lying regions in norhwestern Australia later this week, temperatures could approach 50ºC. The image below shows predicted surface air temperatures from the ECMWF-HRES model on Saturday and Sunday. Both days of...

Record $78bn year for agricultural production in Australia

  Australia’s farmers are expected to post a record-breaking $78 billion agricultural production value in 2021-22, thanks in part to the first back-to-back La Nina events in a decade. Despite flooding rain delaying harvests and destroying some crops in...

Buildings flattened during record-challenging U.S. tornado outbreak

  A lengthy investigation is underway in the U.S. following a potentially record-breaking outbreak of tornadoes in the country’s mid-Mississippi Valley late last week. Multiple tornado-producing thunderstorms tore across several states in the southeast U.S. on Friday, December 10,...

Coral Sea tropical cyclone likely to develop this weekend

  A tropical low located to the south of the Solomon Islands has the potential to intensify into a tropical cyclone this weekend.   The satellite image below shows the low in at 9am AEDT on Friday. The large mass of cloud in the image shows that there is a...

November a volatile month for Australian solar power

  Parts of eastern and southern Australia just had their cloudiest November in decades, reducing solar power generation across several states.  A wet, mild and cloudy November in Australia  Last month was Australia’s wettest November on record and its coolest November in 22 years. It was also an exceptionally...

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Satisfy your weather obsession with these news headlines from around the nation, and the world.

Australia’s 2026-27 Tropical Cyclone Season: Late Start, Real Risk

Australia’s tropical cyclone season is officially underway, but we may not see much activity for few months yet.  The season runs from November to April, and for mining operators and businesses across northern Australia, 2026-27 is shaping up to be a season where the headline numbers and the real risk may not line up.  On […]

Positive IOD declared: Not a typical dry signal for Australia

A positive Indian Ocean Dipole is underway, but this one is unlikely to deliver the textbook dry spring and summer that businesses have come to expect from the pattern.  The Bureau of Meteorology officially declared a positive IOD on Tuesday, October 27, which typically like El Niño can cause drier and warmer conditions over parts of […]

Signs of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, but it may not follow the textbook

Waters off Indonesia have cooled in recent weeks, an indication that a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event could be developing. It’s an important climate driver for Australia, and it could shape rainfall and temperatures heading into summer, with flow-on effects for farmers, energy and other industries.  What is the Indian Ocean Dipole?  The IOD […]

1.3 million lightning strikes and a record September downpour: the storms testing WA’s Goldfields

Leonora, WA, had its wettest September day on record earlier this month. Three weeks later, more than 1.3 million lightning pulses were detected within 800 km of the town in 48 hours. Why is a stalled trough delivering storms to mining country, and what it could mean for operations?  The DTN Total Lightning Network detected […]