Jane's Weather: Drought stricken farmers finally receive rain over the long weekend
A quarter of Victoria recorded more than 50mm of rain over the long weekend and the majority of southeastern Australia saw more than 25mm.
Many places picked up more rain over the three day weekend than they did in the first two months of the year.
A few spots located well inland did only receive 5mm to 10mm, but the vast majority saw good rainfalls, incredibly useful after such a long period of well below average rain, transforming paddocks and dams.
The big question is - is there any more rain to come?
A big, juicy, follow up rain system would be very welcome, but we don't have one of those lining up for the southeast in the foreseeable future. Most areas are likely to see less than 10mm over the next week.
The next low is crossing the Bight on Wednesday, heading towards the southeast.
This one is going to take a very different path to the last one (that slowly trekked across Bass Strait then out to the Tasman Sea - a perfect path for big rainfalls in the southeast).
This one is going to deliver 5mm to 10 mm for parts of South Australia (over the Eyre Peninsula, West Coast and Northwest Pastoral), then rapidly dissipate, bringing hardly anything to the rest of the southeast.
It then re-forms over the Tasman Sea late in the week, brushing the NSW coast.
There is another system lining up to cross the southwest on Friday and South Australia on Saturday. Then this one also dissipates, with just a little rain for the rest of the southeast on Sunday.
That does pave the way for another weather system to come up from the south (skipping southwestern Australia), barrelling through the southeast on Monday into Tuesday next week.
At this stage it just looks like a regular cold front, with the best falls (10mm to 20mm, locally more) near the coast and in western Tasmania, drying up as it heads north and east.
The outlook for the next few months has the moisture part of the rain equation working well: A neutral Pacific Ocean, with plenty of warmer than average water off eastern Australia (to bring us a local source of moisture rather than the global effects of an El Nino or La Nina); and a developing Negative Indian Ocean Dipole (to give us a big push of moisture from the Indian Ocean).
But that's the moisture part of the equation - not the instability part.
You need low pressure to turn that moisture into rain and if the lows can't track where they are needed, there won't be much rain.
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7NEWS
2 days ago
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Jane's Weather: Drought stricken farmers finally receive rain over the long weekend
A quarter of Victoria recorded more than 50mm of rain over the long weekend and the majority of southeastern Australia saw more than 25mm. Many places picked up more rain over the three day weekend than they did in the first two months of the year. A few spots located well inland did only receive 5mm to 10mm, but the vast majority saw good rainfalls, incredibly useful after such a long period of well below average rain, transforming paddocks and dams. The big question is - is there any more rain to come? A big, juicy, follow up rain system would be very welcome, but we don't have one of those lining up for the southeast in the foreseeable future. Most areas are likely to see less than 10mm over the next week. The next low is crossing the Bight on Wednesday, heading towards the southeast. This one is going to take a very different path to the last one (that slowly trekked across Bass Strait then out to the Tasman Sea - a perfect path for big rainfalls in the southeast). This one is going to deliver 5mm to 10 mm for parts of South Australia (over the Eyre Peninsula, West Coast and Northwest Pastoral), then rapidly dissipate, bringing hardly anything to the rest of the southeast. It then re-forms over the Tasman Sea late in the week, brushing the NSW coast. There is another system lining up to cross the southwest on Friday and South Australia on Saturday. Then this one also dissipates, with just a little rain for the rest of the southeast on Sunday. That does pave the way for another weather system to come up from the south (skipping southwestern Australia), barrelling through the southeast on Monday into Tuesday next week. At this stage it just looks like a regular cold front, with the best falls (10mm to 20mm, locally more) near the coast and in western Tasmania, drying up as it heads north and east. The outlook for the next few months has the moisture part of the rain equation working well: A neutral Pacific Ocean, with plenty of warmer than average water off eastern Australia (to bring us a local source of moisture rather than the global effects of an El Nino or La Nina); and a developing Negative Indian Ocean Dipole (to give us a big push of moisture from the Indian Ocean). But that's the moisture part of the equation - not the instability part. You need low pressure to turn that moisture into rain and if the lows can't track where they are needed, there won't be much rain.
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Australia, Pacific rocked by ocean heatwaves last year
Ocean temperatures in the south-west Pacific reached fresh highs last year as heatwaves struck more than 10 per cent of the world's marine waters. Long stints of extreme ocean heat were experienced by nearly 40 million square kilometres of the region in 2024, including the waters surrounding Australia, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has revealed. WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said ocean heat and acidification were together inflicting long-lasting damage on marine ecosystems and economies "It is increasingly evident that we are fast running out of time to turn the tide," she said. High ocean temperatures have been wreaking havoc on heat-sensitive coral reefs worldwide, with Australian authorities reporting the sixth mass bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef in less than a decade. Warming on land was also higher than it had ever been last year, with Thursday's report from the United Nations weather and climate agency identifying temperatures roughly 0.48 °C above the 1991–2020 average across the region. Heatwaves were particularly acute in Western Australia, with the coastal town of Carnarvon reaching 49.9°C in February and breaking existing temperature records by more than two degrees. The south-west Pacific assessment aligns with global temperature records being consistently broken as concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reach fresh highs. Last year was the hottest on record and the first to surpass 1.5C warmer than pre-industrial times, the benchmark temperature under the Paris climate agreement. The global pact has not yet been breached as it refers to long-term trends but more warming is expected, with a separate WMO report predicting a 70 per cent chance the average temperature over the next five years will exceed 1.5 degrees. The WMO regional report pre-dated Cyclone Alfred and the devastating flooding events Australia experienced in the first half of 2025 but captured above-average rainfall for the northern states last year. A sea level rise in the Pacific region that exceeds global averages was also recorded, threatening island communities living near the coast. Elsewhere in the region, Indonesia's glacier ice degraded 30-50 per cent compared to 2022. If melting continues at the same rate, the ice is on track to disappear entirely by 2026 or soon after. The Philippines was struck by twice as many cyclones as normal, with 12 storms hitting the country between September and November. Climate patterns also influenced the year's weather events, including El Nino conditions at the start of 2024 in the tropical Pacific ocean that weakened to neutral conditions by the middle of the year. Head of the federal Climate Change Authority Matt Kean said there was still "time to arrest this direction of travel to a hothouse destination" at an event in Sydney on Wednesday. "First, we should ignore the doubters whose main mission seems to be to prolong the life of fossil fuel industries," he said while delivering the Talbot Oration at the Australian Museum.
