Weather News

Signs indicating Australia's cool season arrival

16:15 AEST Mere hours after our Total Lightning Network went quiet over the Australian continent, the Himawari satellite captured a clear, textbook snapshot of the arrival of Australia's cool season.   A few distinguishing features should catch your eye:  A band of cloud streaming over northern WA and towards the nation's interior  A distinct clearing of cloud from most of the NT's Top End, and  A band of cloud crossing to the south of WA   Turns out, all three of these features point to one thing: winter is knocking at the door.  Image: Himawari satellite imagery and mean sea level pressure (ECMWF) over Australia on the morning of Saturday, April 27th, 2024.
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Uncontrolled WA fire causes massive smoke plume

14:48 AEST A bushfire burning out of control in the far southwest of WA has created a 700 km-long smoke plume that can be seen from space.
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Satellites capture huge dust storm crossing Mediterranean Sea

14:32 AEST Images captured from satellites have revealed the colossal scale of a dust storm that turned the sky orange in parts of Greece earlier this week.
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Summery Sydney, wintry Melbourne

15:39 AEST It's been one of those days when Australia's two largest cities could hardly have been more different in terms of weather.
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Tassie snow, Melbourne temps go low

10:33 AEST Snow has fallen in Tasmania, while Melbourne has experienced a dramatic temperature drop as a cold front whipped through Tasmania and southern Victoria overnight.
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Wind returning to southeastern Australia

10:07 AEST After a prolonged period of light winds, a surge of powerful winds and cool air will push through southeastern Australia during the next 48 hours.  As we wrote about last week the National Electricity Market (NEM) saw very low wind power generation during the seven days leading up to Thursday, April 18, with the daily wind generation having been under 41 GWh/day for this period.  Wind power has improved slightly during the past week, with wind power increasing for a few days over last weekend.
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Coldest April night in 25 years for SA towns

12:19 AEST Three South Australian towns have shivered through their coldest April night in 25 years as a near-stationary high pressure system centred over southeastern Australia made for windless, chilly nights over the weekend and into Monday morning.
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Winter is Coming: Chilly day for Sydney, rain pelts eastern seaboard

17:22 AEST Just as we forecast yesterday, a coastal trough has deepened along the NSW and southeast Qld coasts as a low in the Coral Sea continues to inch closer to Qld.  The trough has brought some interesting weather to NSW in the past 36 hours or so, particularly along the coastal fringe, giving those New South Welshmen a “Stark” Game of Thrones reminder: winter is coming.
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A very wet weekend for southeast Qld, northeast NSW

11:48 AEST A prolonged rainfall event is set to bring large totals to parts of NSW and Qld from Saturday, with possible heavy falls and flooding.  A low-pressure system in the Coral Sea, a deepening coastal trough and persistent easterlies will bring moisture-laden air into southeast Qld and northeast NSW will bring days of rainfall to the region.  While there is not a drop of rain on the radar over southeast Qld and Northeast NSW on Friday morning, the mass of cloud associated with a low in the Coral Sea will enhance rainfall over the weekend.
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Generation gone with the wind

13:20 AEST A weeklong stretch of low wind power was broken on Wednesday evening, as a weak cold front marched across southern Australia.  The chart below shows that the National Electricity Market (NEM) has endured a weeklong stretch of low wind generation, with wind power providing around 6% of the NEM’s electricity, down from last year’s average of 13.1% (Mon, April 15 to Wed, April 17).
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Dubai deluge: a year's rainfall in a day

16:41 AEST Flights have been unable to land or take off from flooded runways, chunks of major roads have eroded away, while motorists have been trapped on inundated freeways as rare heavy rainfall lashed Dubai.
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BoM declares El Niño over

15:03 AEST The Bureau of Meteorology has officially declared El Niño over and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is now inactive for the first time since 2021, meaning there is no immediate sign of either an El Niño or a La Niña event.
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Perth storms drench some suburbs, leave others bone dry

13:38 AEST The heavy rain that Perth residents are so desperately hoping for drenched some northern suburbs on Friday afternoon, but ultimately fizzled out in most parts of the city, delivering just 1.2 mm to the city's official weather station, while numerous locations in and around the metropolitan area missed out altogether.
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Fog blankets Kalgoorlie

14:16 AEST A rare sight of fog graced Kalgoorlie in the early hours of Sunday morning, starting from around 5am, peaking just after 6am as the sun rose, and lifting by 7am as winds started to pick up.
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Remarkably Unremarkable Weather

12:15 AEST In a week where it seemed like the weather gods were working overtime, it now seems like they’re completely spent and have taken the weekend off.  It was only a week ago that Sydney copped a drenching with a few hundred millimetres of rain and major flooding in Western Sydney.
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Stunning images capture Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre filling

09:09 AEST Seeing Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre filling with water is like witnessing the lifeblood of Australia returning to the country’s heart, and that rare spectacle is happening this month.
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Jarrah trees dying in WA's big dry

10:30 AEST This is the image that sums up the ongoing desperately dry spell in the southwest corner of Western Australia.
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Nine metre waves and 100 km/h winds hit NSW

11:09 AEST A powerful burst of southerly winds is causing massive waves to batter NSW beaches today, with warnings in place for damaging surf in some areas.
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Storms, damaging wind and large surf battering NSW

14:37 AEST A surge of showers, thunderstorms, damaging winds and powerful surf will continue to affect parts of eastern NSW over the next 24 hours.
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First Aussie mainland snow of 2024

09:37 AEST Snow has fallen overnight in Australia's mainland ski resorts and continues to tumble down on Tuesday morning as a cold front sweeps across southeast Australia.
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When is Australia?s next total solar eclipse?

14:42 AEST A total solar eclipse will sweep across parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada on Monday, April 8, 2024.
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Olga to avoid Australian mainland

15:21 AEST   Western Australia has managed to steer clear of a time change back to standard time on Sunday morning, unlike the country's southeastern states.
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Signs indicating Australia's cool season arrival

16:15 AEST Mere hours after our Total Lightning Network went quiet over the Australian continent, the Himawari satellite captured a clear, textbook snapshot of the arrival of Australia's cool season.   A few distinguishing features should catch your eye:  A band of cloud streaming over northern WA and towards the nation's interior  A distinct clearing of cloud from most of the NT's Top End, and  A band of cloud crossing to the south of WA   Turns out, all three of these features point to one thing: winter is knocking at the door.  Image: Himawari satellite imagery and mean sea level pressure (ECMWF) over Australia on the morning of Saturday, April 27th, 2024.