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Australia's 2024 weather in photos
Ben Domensino, Sunday December 29, 2024 - 06:00 AEDT
This year was full of captivating weather moments in Australia, and Weatherzone’s online community captured some of these spectacular events in photos.
January
Australia kicked off 2024 with plenty of rainfall, with the country registering its ninth wettest January on record. However, it wasn’t wet everywhere and the southwest of WA barely saw any rain in the first month of the year.
The dry landscape in southwestern Australia at the beginning of 2024 created a contrasting backdrop when dark storm clouds built over WA’s Wheatbelt region in the middle of the month. The image below shows a huge cumulonimbus cloud causing an isolated burst of rain near Narrogin.
Image: Towering cumulonimbus cloud over Narrogin, WA in January 2024. Source: @tomproudfoot / Instagram
February
The second month of 2024 turned out to be an exceptionally dry month for parts of western Vic. To make matters worse, the state experienced waves of intense heat accompanied by blustery winds and dry thunderstorms.
Several large fires broke out in Vic’s dry landscape during February, including the one photographed below, which was located to the north of Beaufort. This dry start to the year would also go on to precede other large and destructive fires towards the end of 2024, which feature further down this article.
Image: Bushfire smoke near Beaufort, Vic in late-February 2024. Source: @angelshomestead / Instagram
March
The transition from summer to autumn saw heavy rain spreading across northern and central Australia, thanks to several broad and slow-moving low pressure troughs. This wet weather contributed to Australia’s third wettest March on record, despite an ongoing lack of rain in parched areas of southern Australia, including Vic, SA and Tas.
March’s heavy outback rain transformed the country’s Red Centre, causing waterfalls to flow down the sides of Uluru. This wasn’t the only time waterfalls formed on the iconic monolith in 2024, but that didn’t make the sight any less captivating.
Image: Waterfalls on Uluru in March 2024. Source: @the_working_journey / Instagram
April
Another rare outback scene caused by heavy rain in the first half of 2024 was Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre filling. Being an ephemeral lake, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre only fills following periods of heavy rain in a vast catchment area that extends over parts of SA, NSW, Qld and the NT. Heavy rain over Qld early in 2024 injected enough water into the catchment to allow the lake to start filling. The scene below was captured in early April.
Image: Water filling Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in April 2024. Source: cam_fry_ / Instagram
May
The last month of autumn was a good chance for southern hemisphere aurora chasers as the strongest geomagnetic storm in years caused the night sky to glow. While most aurora sightings in Australia come from the far southern states, the event is May was so strong it could be seen from Queensland.
Image: Aurora Australis visible from the Scenic Rim region in Queensland in early May 2024. Source: @casey_eveleigh / Instagram
June
The first month of winter saw cold weather settling in across the country’s southern states and wintry weather can produce spectacular scenes in the sky.
The photo bow below was spotted in central Tasmania on a cold day in June. The fog bow was caused by light from the sun being reflected and refracted by tiny droplets of water in the lower atmosphere. Fog bows form in a similar way to rainbows, but the smaller droplet size causes them to appear as a ghostly white arc.
Image: A fog bow spotted over an ice-rimmed lake in Tasmania’s Central Highlands during the middle of June. Source: @stephen.kettle / Instagram
July
A deep freeze set in over parts of southeastern Australia during July, causing Tasmania to register its lowest July temperatures on record. The temperature got so low that a thick glaze formed on some of the trees in Tasmania’s Central Highlands, causing talons of ice to hang from leaves and branches.
Image: Glaze on a tree next to the Highland Lakes Road in Tasmania during July 2024. Source: @stephen.kettle / Instagram
August
The final month of winter featured plenty of fog across Australia’s chilly southern states, including the impressive scene captured in the image below. The image was taken at Hallett Cove in Adelaide as fog hung over the water and parts of the coast.
Fog is more prominent in the cooler months because the air can more easily cool to its dew point, causing airborne water vapour to condense into the tiny liquid droplets that make fog.
Image: Fog at Hallett Cove, SA in August 2024. Source: @stellar_momentum / Instagram
September
One of the largest full moons of the year occurred in September when a supermoon appeared in the night sky above Australia. Supermoons are simply full moons that occur when the moon is near its closest point to earth in its elliptical orbit. Supermoons appear about 14% larger than the smallest moon of the year.
Image: September’s supermoon over Sydney’s Opera House. Source: @philipps.world.of.photography / Instagram
October
If you like lightning, then October is a month for you. Thunderstorms typically start to become more active over Australia in October, as this is when the key ingredients required for storm development start to become more available:
Moisture in the air near the ground
Instability in the atmosphere
A lifting mechanism that causes air to start rising
One day alone at the beginning of October produced more than 600,000 lightning strikes over WA. There were storms over many other areas in Australia during the month, including Dundee Beach in the NT, which you can see in the impressive image below.
Image: Lightning at Dundee Beach, NT in October 2024. Source: @thegoldensnapper / Instagram
November
Bioluminescence is not technically weather, but the eerie light display in the water is as impressive as anything you might see in the sky. Bioluminescence occurs when light is produced by a chemical reaction inside living organisms. It can occur in fish, squids, crustaceans and algae, and is typically triggered when the water these organisms are living in becomes disturbed or agitated.
Image: Bioluminescence at South Arm, Tas during November 2024. Source: @mountaingoat.creative.images / Instagram
December
A hot and dry end to 2024 allowed more fires to range in western Victoria during December. One large fire in the Grampians National Park caused a huge plume of smoke to drift over South Australia and Melbourne. The image below shows the smoke from this fire shielding the afternoon sun at Belgrave South, near Melbourne.
Image: Smoke in the sky over central Victoria in mid-December 2024. Source: @aussiestormfreak / Instagram
- Weatherzone
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2024
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