Firefighters in Qld and NSW will continue to face challenging conditions over the next two days amid another burst of hot, dry and windy weather. A cold front crossing southeastern Australia on Monday and Tuesday will cause a tongue of hot and dry air to sweep across NSW and Qld. This heat will be […]

  We all know that Darwin experiences an extended dry season through the middle months of the year, but the 2023 dry season was a lot drier than most. Indeed, Darwin received a grand total of no rainfall in this year’s dry season, which officially runs from May through September according to the BoM. Darwin […]

  There were “striking” scenes in the skies above the southwest of Western Australia on Sunday afternoon, as a quarter of a million lightning strikes sparked a spectacular sky show. The awesome natural fireworks display was caused by a trough moving through the area, with significantly cooler air behind the warm airmass east of the […]

The first tropical cyclone to form near the Australian region this season is about to unleash a burst of severe weather in Vanuatu. Tropical Cyclone Lola formed to the northeast of Vanuatu on Sunday. As it developed outside the eastern boundary of Australia’s area of responsibility, Lola was named by the Fiji Meteorological Service. Lola […]

  The first tropical cyclone of the season is likely to form early next week near the Solomon Islands and could move into Australian waters.   A tropical low-pressure system developed to the east of the Solomon Islands on Friday morning and has been named Tropical Low 01U by the Bureau of Meteorology.   The […]

  A remarkably dry airmass over central Australia will move east over the next 72 hours, bringing dangerous fire weather to NSW over the weekend.   The map below shows the parched air sitting over parts of WA, the NT, SA and Qld on Thursday morning.  Image: 2m Dewpoint and 10 metre wind observations at 9:30am […]

  There are early indications that a tropical cyclone could form near the Solomon Islands next week, with some forecast models suggesting the system could briefly enter Australia’s area of responsibility. Australia’s official tropical cyclone season runs from November until April. During this 6-month period, we typically see around 9 to 10 tropical cyclones forming […]

Winds are a key component to understanding the behaviour of bushfires. But what happens when the wind suddenly changes direction? Typically, a fire will tend to spread along the same direction as the prevailing winds. In a strong wind, this allows the fire front to follow the wind very quickly and can exceed 50km/h in […]

This year’s positive Indian Ocean Dipole is gaining strength so quickly that it’s getting close to the record-challenging 2019 event that underpinned Australia’s warmest and driest year on record. While the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño has been getting a lot of attention in recent months, its lesser-known cousin – the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – […]