Australia Weather News

Photographs of weather phenomena around Australia, some of them capturing rare events, have been chosen for the 2017 Australian Weather Calendar.

The calendar is now in its 33rd year and is jointly published by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

Bureau of Meteorologist Senior Climatologist, Agata Imelska said the photographs were not just pretty pictures.

"It's also a way for us to document some of these really extraordinary weather phenomena and also educate people," Ms Imelska said.

A competition was held to select 13 images for the calendar all of which were taken over the past few years and range from a lightning strike near Longreach in Queensland to Canberra in fog from Mount Ainslie.

Along with images and videos shared through social media, the photographs entered in the calendar competition help the Bureau confirm and record that certain weather events occurred in particular locations at exact times and to build up an historical database of climatic conditions.

Explaining the weather

Each month's image is accompanied by explanations and diagrams outlining how that particular weather phenomena occurred as well as details about the conditions in which the photograph was taken and what camera and lens were used.

The picture for March is of Aurora australis viewed from Mawson Station in Antarctica and shot by Lydia Jean Dobromilsky who was working with the Australian Antarctic Division.

Ms Imelska said it could be difficult to see a good event of the southern lights — which were caused by solar flares.

"You need to be at the south pole at the right time, you can't have cloudy conditions. The photograph in this year's calendar was taken when the temperature dropped more than 25 degrees below zero," Ms Imelska said.

Clouds also feature heavily in the calendar including the image for June which is gravity wave clouds as photographed by John Baxter which look like a rolling mountain or ripples across the surface of a pond.

"As air gets pushed up, it cools and sinks down and then it has this ripple effect and rolling effect as air finally settles down," Ms Imelska said.

September's image of a moon halo over Bencubbin in Western Australia was taken by Kylie Gee after she saw a Facebook post about the phenomena.

Ms Imelska said halos such as this one form when the moon or sun shone through cirrus or cirrostratus clouds.

"These clouds are actually fine ice crystals. The ice crystals catch and refract the moonlight and then basically form a halo."

Ms Imelska said clouds told a lot about what was happening in the atmosphere.

"Atmosphere is effectively a liquid that's why we can sometimes see very similar features to what you would see on the ocean floor."

Rare phenomena captured

The calendar features the work of professional and amateur weather photographers who braved rain, hail, shine and freezing conditions to capture these moments in time.

January's image is by Chris Tangey who snapped the rare occurrence of heavy hail in the Ilparpa claypans in the Northern Territory.

"I'd taken a few happy snaps in our garden but it wasn't until I saw what a teenager on Facebook was posting up the road that I realised this was an Antarctic blast in the desert," Mr Tangey said.

He said he didn't want to get the same old shots as everyone else so he followed the weather to capture something really different.

"Lots of 'townies' had travelled the 12k out from Alice to start building 'snowmen' and towing their kids through the ice. I traced it back into the bush and that's where I found a whole field of white."

The keen weather photographer who works as a film and television camera operator said unusual natural events seem to find him rather than the other way round.

"This is my second time in the BOM Calendar, I was also in with my fire tornado in 2014, it was just like the biblical pillar of fire in the desert."

Snapping in a cold snap

The December image is a frosted spiderweb taken by Tasmanian, Leanne Osmond, who said photographing in the cold does not deter her and fact "frost and fog are some of my favourite things."

"You've got to be out there in that weather, that's when the magic's happening so you've just got to rug up and be prepared," Ms Osmond said.

Her spiderweb was captured while visiting her uncle at the town of St Marys in the middle of winter.

"When I knew it was going to be a nice cold morning I was up and out very early and it was a complete white out. It was just beautiful," she said.

She saw the spiderweb on a fence post and "knew it was going to be something special".

"It was a beautiful, calm still frozen morning and it [the spiderweb] just lit up as the sun came up and it looked stunning."

Sharing Australia's weather worldwide

Last year, the Australian Weather Calendar was delivered to more than 80 countries.

One of the photographers in the 2017 calendar, Flavia Jager Williams, has already sent several copies to her home country of Brazil.

She said it was a big honour to have her image of a rainbow at Binda in southern NSW, included in the publication.

The Brazilian-Australian said she continued to be amazed by Australia's weather and landscape.

"When I go to Brazil they always think I'm on holidays all the time because they see always beautiful pictures from here."