Global climate records are being rewritten this month, with Earth just registering its warmest week in recorded history and Antarctic sea ice anomalies plunging to their lowest levels ever observed. Earth’s atmosphere is monitored constantly throughout the year by a global network of instruments that span land, sea, sky and space. This global observation network […]
Do the Australian Alps – as in the mountains of our southeast mainland – really get more snow in winter than the Swiss Alps? It’s one of the oldest myths in Australian weather-related folklore, and it reared its head again last weekend, when New South Wales premier Chris Minns took to social media after heavy […]
An intense flash flood swept through Zaragoza in northeastern Spain last Thursday, catching motorists completely off guard by the torrent of water. On Thursday 6th a near-stationary supercell thunderstorm formed over the region, dumping a torrential 20mm of rain in just 10 minutes. All up, 54mm fell over the town, nearly equal to its entire average […]
Sydney Airport has been grappling with the challenges posed by strong crosswinds, forcing the airport to operate on a single runway several times over the past few weeks. These gusty westerly-component winds (exceeding 20 knots or 37 km/h at times), blowing perpendicular to the north-to-south oriented runways, have created significant disruptions in flight operations, resulting […]
The record for the world’s hottest day has been broken twice this week, according to new data published by the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute. We are talking here about global average temperatures, NOT the hottest single official reading, which for the record was 56.7°C at Death Valley in the western USA in 1913. […]
A series of cold fronts will cause a burst of windy weather across a large swathe of southern Australia during the next 4 to 5 days, with potential for widespread damaging winds this weekend. The satellite images below show speckled cloud being driven over southwestern Australia on Wednesday morning as a complex low pressure system […]
The Bureau of Meteorology has refrained from declaring El Niño this week as the atmosphere stubbornly refuses to respond to lingering warm water in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Murmurs of a potential El Niño have been circulating since the start of this year, when forecast models began hinting at a swift transition from La Niña […]
Parts of Western Queensland are already having their wettest July on record after copping 10 to 15 times their monthly average rainfall in the last 24 hours. A northwest cloudband has been causing rain in far Western Qld since Friday, although the heaviest falls in most areas have been occurring from Sunday into Monday morning. […]
Cold and staying that way. That’s the forecast for Perth as yet another cold front bears down upon southwestern WA after the coldest average max temps for June in 50 years. We’ll deal with this week’s chilly weather in a moment, but firstly: As mentioned, Perth had its coldest June in 50 years in terms […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
