An outbreak of early-spring thunderstorms has caused prolific lightning over Australia’s southeastern states during the last 24 hours. The animation below shows lightning spreading across central and southeastern Australia on Thursday and Friday morning. These storms were triggered by a large pool of cold air from the Southern Ocean clashing with much warmer air […]

The strong early spring cold front continues its march across eastern Australia, generating wild winds and a huge line of storms stretching from southern Qld, all the way through NSW, and into Victoria. No notable rainfall totals have been reported yet with this system in NSW or Vic as it’s moving pretty quickly and tending […]

Australia just had its warmest winter in more than a century of records with lean snow cover and prolific lightning rounding out an almost unrecognisable season. Australia’s national mean temperature in winter 2023 was 16.73ºC, which is 1.53ºC above the 1961-1990 average. This was the country’s highest mean winter temperature in records dating back to […]

  It’s the sort of stormy day in large parts of New South Wales and Queensland this Wednesday that reminds you that spring is just around the corner. You can see the storms moving across the central and eastern parts of the eastern states on Wednesday afternoon on the loop below, many of them tracking […]

Australia’s severe thunderstorm season is about to begin. But with a looming El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole, what can we expect to see across the country this season? Thunderstorms impact Australia all year round. They are most common in eastern and northern Australia, where there is just the right mixture of heat and […]

  The Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC) has released its seasonal bushfire outlook for spring 2023, and it’s not great news for residents of several states. Take a look at the map below. Red shading represents areas with an increased risk of fire – which AFAC defines as the likelihood of an increased number of […]

A positive Indian Ocean Dipole pattern has started to emerge to the northwest of Australia, increasing the likelihood of abnormally warm and dry weather over large parts of the country this spring. The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) refers to an index that measures sea surface temperatures in the tropical Indian Ocean. A positive IOD occurs […]

he remnants of Hurricane Hilary are bringing life-threatening severe weather to parts of California and Nevada, with flooding even reaching the hottest place on Earth – Death Valley National Park. Tropical Storm Hillary crashed into the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico on Sunday local time. The system then crossed the border into Southern California on […]

  Several natural and human-made influences combined forces across Earth last month, creating a ‘perfect climate storm’ that made July 2023 Earth’s warmest month on record. Recently published data from Berkeley Earth shows that Earth’s global average temperature in July was 17.2ºC, which is 1.54ºC above the 1850 to 1900 average. This was the highest […]