Despite the ocean giving clear signs that El Niño could form later this year, a lack of feedback from the atmosphere is giving forecasters a reason to be cautious in their outlook. An abrupt period of warming across the equatorial Pacific Ocean has seen an El Niño-like pattern of sea-surface-temperature anomalies emerging in recent months. […]
Australia just had an unusually strong tropical cyclone season, despite having only six systems named inside Australia’s area of responsibility. The 2022-23 Australian tropical cyclone season officially ran from November 1, 2022, until April 30, 2023. During this six-month period, the Bureau of Meteorology assigned names to six tropical cyclones that formed inside Australia’s area […]
Tropical Cyclone Ilsa continues to intensify on Thursday morning, with a wind gust of 235 km/h recorded at 7am Rowley Shoals, a trio of tiny coral atolls located 300 km west of Broome. This is the strongest wind gust recorded anywhere in Australia since TC Debbie in 2017 Ilsa is now a Category 4 cyclone […]
A tropical cyclone is expected to develop near Australia this weekend and may make landfall along the north coast of WA mid-to-late next week. A tropical low formed on Wednesday night about 550km NNE of Darwin, above the warm tropical water of the Arafura Sea. While the low itself isn’t too impressive on satellite imagery […]
On Saturday, Indonesia’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi, erupted, sending huge plumes of ash into the sky. It serves as a large-scale reminder of how ash and dust from explosions, including in mining and demolition, can travel and spread. Mount Merapi erupted at 5am UTC (1pm WST) on Saturday afternoon. Most notable was a […]
A surge of tropical moisture will produce heavy rain and thunderstorms in parts of northwest and central Queensland during the next several days, likely causing flooding and road closures in parts of the state. A slow-moving tropical low pressure system will help drag copious moisture across Qld from the northwest in the coming days. The […]
Air temperatures are expected to reach into the forties in multiple states over the weekend. What can the temperature get to in a typical open cut mine? The temperatures we commonly report here at Weatherzone are the official air temperature readings for Bureau of Meteorology sites. The thermometers used are housed in special Stevenson […]
Several large fires continue to burn across southern Qld today, creating smoke plumes so large that they can be seen by satellites sitting more than 35,000 km above Earth’s surface. A wet spring followed by an unusually dry start to summer has caused a build-up of dry vegetation over the southeast inland of Qld […]
The Madden-Julian Oscillation and the monsoon are starting their second approach of the season towards Australia, along with their elevated risk of tropical cyclone development. The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is an eastward moving pulse of tropical activity that travels the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It affects Australia the greatest between November and April, but […]
Severe thunderstorms impacted southwest WA and the Perth region on Sunday, December 14, 2025, triggering Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts (DTA) by DTN for industries and businesses in the region. DTN operates Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts (DTA) which alert businesses and industries to thunderstorms based on intensity and movement. These alerts provide advanced notice of thunderstorms moving into […]
Port and maritime operations across Australia’s East Coast could be disrupted by increased tropical cyclone activity in the Coral Sea and southwest Pacific Ocean over the next two weeks. Meteorologists reference a large selection of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models to forecast weather. A number of these NWP models are forecasting the development of tropical […]
Hot, dry and windy weather causing elevated fire danger and severe heatwave conditions are sweeping across southeastern Australia over the next three days, driving high energy demand and disruption to operations. Clear skies associated a large and slow-moving high pressure system have allowed hot air to build up over parts of northern, western and central […]
The Australian and New Zealand Council for fire and emergency services (AFAC) identified western and southern WA, Victoria and inland NSW as key regions that are at risk of heightened bushfire risk this summer. Parts of Australia have experienced severe soil moisture and rainfall deficiencies over the past months and years, while high fuel loads […]
