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Today, 7:00PM UTC
Australia's 2024 weather in photos
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
Today, 3:23AM UTC
A city of two halves
Sydney was a city of two halves yesterday, with a soggy start for some in the morning giving way to the city’s hottest day since January. After storms rolled through the north in the morning, with heavy showers further south, skies cleared allowing temperatures to soar. With a peak of 37.4 degrees in Sydney yesterday, the city experienced its hottest day since the mercury climbed to 38.5 degrees at the start of this year. Yesterday’s 37.4°C is up there with limited company in terms of days exceeding 35 degrees recently, and even more so when looking at days over 37 degrees. In the last 5 years there have been 18 days when Sydney has exceeded 35 degrees, with 10 of these exceeding 37 degrees – the highest of which occurred in 2020 at 41.2 degrees. The remainder of 2024 will be warm, however, with temperatures hovering just below 30 degrees. 2025 looks set to kick off with similar temperatures and largely sunny conditions for the harbour city.
27 Dec 2024, 7:00PM UTC
The wild tale of Mt Kosciuszko's short-lived weather observatory
In 1897, a band of hardy men decided to build a fully staffed weather observation hut atop Australia’s highest point, Mt Kosciuszko (2228m). It was doomed from day one. The weather station became known as Wragge’s Observatory. It was the brainchild of British meteorologist Clement Wragge. They called him "Inclement" Wragge – a humorous nickname which reflected his love of wild weather. Ultimately, the weather up on Mt Kosciuszko would prove too inclement even for old “Inclement” Wragge himself. The working party to build the observatory arrived at the summit in December 1897 with horses and supplies, including timber for construction of the hut. Local paper The Monaro Mercury described the party as arriving in "most unfavourable weather conditions" and they spent a rough night exposed to winds that made it too hard to pitch tents. The men immediately set about building the first of the two rooms in the hut. The next day, six inches (approx. 20cm) of snow coated the ground. The following night they recorded a temperature of 24.3°F (–4.3°C). The cold weather meant that it was impossible for the first couple of days to make the mortar for the stone chimney. Remember, this was summer. If establishing the hut was a nightmare, living in it and monitoring conditions over the coming winter was no less a challenge. The hut had a door for summer entry and a roof portal for winter access when snow reached all the way up to the flat roof – which it usually did by late June. Image: Rime on a rock outcrop up near Mt Kosciuszko. Source: @trashyhonky on Instagram. A lightning rod erected on the side of the hut would collect huge icicles which would often come crashing down onto the roof at night, waking the men. The icicles were made of a type of ice called rime – caused when supercooled water droplets in fog or clouds come into contact with a surface and freeze on impact. READ MORE: Rime time in the icy Snowy Mountains When the men went to check the thermometer which was erected just metres outside the hut, they usually had to be roped so they wouldn't be blown off the mountain. Sadly, few of the weather observations taken at Wragge’s Observatory remain. Ultimately, the observatory proved to be more of a testament to human resilience than to meaningful scientific data gathering. Eventually, even that resilience wore thin. Spring floods and co-habitation by rodents were two other persistent problems. The observatory was abandoned in 1904. It was just too tough up there. Then in 1914, it burned to the ground after a lightning strike. Image: A lovely summer day on Mt Kosciuszko's summit (where Wragge's Observatory once stood) looking south to Australia's second-highest peak Mt Townsend (2209m). Source: iStock. Today, up to 100 thousand people climb Mt Kosciuszko each year. It's a super popular hike in summer, accessed from the top of the Kosciuszko Chairlift at Thredbo (6km) or from the road above the ski village of Charlotte Pass (8km). No trace of the weather observatory or any other human structure remains, except for the summit plinth and one information sign. If you're lucky enough to visit on a clear summer day, the weather can be warm, sunny and benign. But conditions like that rarely last more than a few days. The next wintry gale and bout of rain and/or snow is never far away, even in summer. READ MORE: Aussie summer snow two days before Christmas Australia's highest weather station now stands within the boundary of Thredbo's upper ski slopes at an elevation of 1957m. It's what the BoM calls an "AWS", or automated weather station, which means no one has to venture outdoors in violent blizzards to take manual measurements. Clement Wragge would no doubt marvel at the technology and wish it had been around in his day.