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Stay informed with the latest weather forecast video, covering rain patterns, temperature outlooks, and severe weather warnings. Updated every few days with expert analysis, from Weather Scientist Alex Dunne.
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00:03Hello, it is Sunday the 16th of August and this is your national weather update for the week as
00:09well as your seasonal outlook at the forecast for sort of spring as well as a little bit of a
00:17check-in with climate drivers. So we'll start off with our forecast and then we'll go into our
00:21long-term stuff. So this week it's mainly very active weather down in the southeast but it
00:27starts out nice and dry. So this satellite image shows you sort of this cold pool of air that moved
00:33through last week and is now settled over the Tasman. We have high pressure systems sitting
00:38here over here in the southeast, some mid-level development of cloud here in the interior and
00:44another high in the west leading to some fairly clear weather before this next front moves through
00:49on Monday. Let's have a look at the current weather warnings that are in place. We have some coastal
00:54wind warnings up here in Queensland, dangerous or hazardous surf down in New South Wales as we have
01:00an onshore flow there and then there's some minor flood warning in northern Victoria after the very
01:05intense rainfall that we saw last week. This will dissipate over the first few days and then return
01:11as some rain comes in. So let's have a very quick look day by day about what's happening
01:16across the country. So starting off here on Sunday, this is that beautiful cloud deck that we just saw
01:24on the satellite image. We have some onshore rainfall over the sort of east coast and then dry along WA
01:32and
01:33Victoria and Tassie. Similar setup for Monday, a front now moves through in WA. This mid-level trough
01:41starts to develop and we continue to get onshore rainfall in New South Wales and Queensland.
01:47This continues for Tuesday. WA starts to dry out. This trough starts to intensify and a front is
01:54starting to move through to connect with that trough on Wednesday. That delivers quite a bit of rainfall
01:59for western Victoria and northwest Tasmania but it's really Thursday where a lot of that rain starts to fall.
02:06Again, in those same areas that had intense rainfall last week. So this is where I could definitely see
02:12some flood warnings to continue to come back. We also see this though extend through large parts of
02:18the southeast in eastern South Australia, in sort of southern New South Wales and as well as in northern
02:24Tasmania. Friday, the system moves over a little bit, delivering rainfalls. Another mid-level trough up here
02:31in the sort of central regions. Saturday, it starts to clear out as this high pressure starts to dominate
02:38and take place and then at Sunday there's a potential next front moving in for WA. So that's
02:45the rainfall, that's the story of the week. I haven't seen any particularly extreme temperatures in the hot
02:50or the cold but there's definitely fog likely along a lot of the areas that experienced rainfall last
02:58week. We've got some moist soils, we've got some calm winds and some cool temperatures in the morning
03:03but not frosty. So definitely some fog is likely on the way. Cool, so that's what's happening this week.
03:10This is the rainfall accumulation. As you can see this is the signature of that front and trough in the
03:17southeast. This is the signature of that Monday front in WA and then this is that onshore rainfall across the
03:25east coast. Let's have a look now into the long-range forecast. We are looking here at the chance of
03:30exceeding median rainfall for September 2026. There is a very low chance that we'll exceed that median
03:39rainfall. That's not surprising. We are going into an El Nino. We have seen this drying trend sort of
03:47really starting to continue across this winter so yeah I'm sure that's not a surprise to anyone here
03:55but I don't particularly love looking at this outlook for rainfall. I think it can sometimes
04:02be a bit misleading. You know you might see a pocket like this where there's a really high
04:07chance of exceeding median rainfall because in September there's not a lot of rainfall up here.
04:12It might be the difference between experiencing three mils of rain versus four mils of rain whereas
04:17down in the southeast because we have much more variability you know we don't really see that
04:23same signature. So instead we're going to look at the rainfall percentage chance scenario. So 75%
04:29chance scenario means it's more likely than not that this is sort of the rainfall that we'll see in terms
04:34of
04:35accumulation. Down in the south it's largely sort of between sort of 10 and maybe 50 mils. 10 really up
04:46into New South Wales here. WA as well and then Tassie a little bit more. And then if we look
04:51at the 25%
04:53chance scenario so this is less likely to happen than not. It's really similar patterns and honestly it's not
05:01that much extra rainfall. So what that's showing me is that the models are fairly consistently saying
05:08that there's not a lot of rainfall on the way. So that's what I'm getting from this September outlook.
05:15I'm now going to switch to the first three months which is September to November so our spring rainfall
05:22and I'm going to go back to this percentage chance above median just to show you this likely chance
05:29again is just the difference between a few millimeters. It's not that much. Whereas because
05:34of the variability down here there's obviously you know a lot more mils to sort of play in. But again
05:40it's showing that really strong signature that the southeast is unlikely to exceed the median rainfall.
05:49So it's unlikely to have more rainfall than usual. I hope that makes sense.
05:56It doesn't you know it doesn't mean that you're going to get the same amount or more or less. It's
06:02just
06:02saying the chance of actually getting more than it is pretty low. But we could still get the median
06:07rainfall. That's I suppose what this is really communicating. Let's quickly go to 50% chance
06:15scenario for rainfall for the first three months though. And we can still see there's just not a
06:20lot on the way sort of 100 to 200 mils as possible along the east coast here and along the
06:27very
06:27southwestern coast there. But yeah not much rain there. Okay let's I suppose actually move on to why
06:36that might be. Actually before we do that we'll quickly check in with how the rainfall is looking at
06:41the moment. So this is the July rainfall and it's just to show we still have a very very very
06:47dry
06:48southwestern Australia. And along the east coast it's super dry as well. If I take that into three
06:54months so we're looking at May to July so sort of our late autumn into winter rainfall we still see
07:02that dry signature up in the east coast areas as well. And again the southwest is really dry at the
07:07moment. We're just not seeing the rain really get there. And then there's definitely been a lot of
07:15rain up in the alpine regions up in Victoria but not as much snowfall so it's been a fairly poor
07:24snow
07:24season there. Okay let's now head into climate drivers and let's do a check-in. So the southern
07:32oscillation index is often a decent indicator of how El Nino is hitting Australia. It's not an
07:39actual measure of El Nino but it often is a good indicator of how El Nino is starting to affect
07:44Australia. And we can see we had this very very steep decline but this week we started to see an
07:50incline.
07:51Now I would wait a little bit to see how this southern oscillation
07:57index continues to progress to see if it continues to rise or not. As you can see you know it
08:04bounces
08:04around quite a bit but yeah before we get our hopes up that this means that the El Nino isn't
08:09intensifying I would definitely wait because out of the models that I'm seeing so this is the ECMWF
08:16model we're continuing to see that it's going to intensify. If I go on to this outlook for ENSO
08:22this is multiple models we still have quite a lot of models showing that it will intensify
08:30although this new USA PSL model is showing that it will maybe stay you know sort of at the level
08:36that we're at now which is still pretty a pretty strong El Nino. So yeah let's definitely be checking
08:42in on that next week to see how it continues to progress. The seasonal forecasts as well often get
08:48a little bit better towards the end of the month just the way that some sort of sneaky background
08:55stuff happens I suppose. But yeah the seasonal forecasts tend to get a little like slightly
09:00more accurate towards the end of the month so we'll definitely check in next week to see how
09:03that's progressing. Indian Ocean Dipole continues to remain really split. You can see last week I suppose
09:11we hit this tipping point of a positive IOD and the Australian model is showing that it will sort
09:18of remain positive whereas the Japanese model is showing that it might go back to neutral. But this
09:23is probably actually the most signal that we've seen in a while that the IOD is trending towards some
09:28sort of state of it being positive and a positive IOD also means a drier Australia as well. The southern
09:35annular mode is sort of continuing to really bounce around this neutral phase which is probably pretty
09:44good. We were in a very positive phase this winter which is why a lot of the fronts really didn't
09:51make
09:51their way up into the mainland. But as you've seen like the past few weeks we've actually started
09:56to get those fronts moving across and delivering some rainfall and that's because we've sort of
10:01tended back you know into this maybe negative or sort of neutral phase so they're starting to be able
10:06to make their way a little bit further up in terms of latitude. And then just finally Matt and Julian
10:13oscillation we're in pretty much a neutral state at the moment heading into wetter but as you can see it's
10:21really quite close to this circle which means the strength is really quite weak. So you know it says
10:28a weaker phase of the MJO but I really wouldn't expect anything there to be really that much wetter
10:34or even when it gets drier that much drier it's really staying quite close to home there so yeah we
10:40wouldn't really expect anything there. Okay that is it I suppose for this week's seasonal outlook.
10:47We've had a look at the spring rainfall and it's looking continually dry again there as well.
10:55Do stay safe, have a great week. If you have any questions that you'd like answered next time
11:00reach out and let us know and we'll do the best that we can. Have a great one, bye!
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