Australia Weather News

The general sentiment that Australia just shivered through a cold winter is false — although it wasn't as warm as forecasts predicted pre-season.

Back in autumn, the Bureau Of Meteorology's (BOM) outlook, along with leading global models, tipped a mean temperature about 1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the baseline average, which would have made this winter one of the warmest on record.

And while temperatures in all states and territories, including in all capitals, were above the long-term average, the past three months have been noticeably cooler than the unprecedented winter heat from 2023 and 2024.

Rainfall through the season stands out for being atypically uniform, with the majority of the nation seeing totals near average — although Perth and Sydney were both soaked by the wettest winter in decades.

All capitals warmer than normal

According to the BOM's ACORN-SAT dataset, the mean temperature across Australia this winter was 0.48C above the 1961-1990 baseline average.

The greatest departures from normal were across north-east Queensland and near the South Australia-Western Australia border where winter was more than 1C warmer than normal.

For our capitals, when comparing this winter to complete climate histories, all cities recorded temperatures above average.

Hobart was the stand-out with a mean — the average of minimums and maximums — of 9.7C, comfortably above the city's long-term average of 8.7C.

Brisbane and Sydney were both 0.9C above average, while Canberra's departure was the lowest at 0.2C above.

However, considering we live in a significantly warmer overall climate than the 19th century, it's perhaps more meaningful to make comparisons only with recent years.

Relative to a modern 1981-2010 baseline reveals our capitals were still on the warm side, with only Melbourne and Canberra cooler than normal by a small fraction of a degree.

However for Melbourne this is partly due to a relocation of the city's weather station away from the CBD a decade ago, which has a greater urban heat island effect.

Despite the overall warmth, parts of Australia's northern interior were cooler than normal, Tennant Creek for example recorded a mean 0.5C below average.

Winter temperatures well down on 2023 and 2024

The perception this winter was chilly may be due to recency bias after the record warm winters from 2023 and 2024.

For example, all capitals were at least 0.3C cooler than last winter, and most were about a full degree below 2023.

So when was the last time winter temperatures were colder than this year?

For the nation as a whole, you only need to go back three years to 2022 to find a colder winter — 0.12C below this year.

Similarly for most capitals, lower temperatures were recorded only a few years ago.

Perth recorded its coldest winter since 2023, while for Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin and Hobart it was the coldest since 2022.

Melbourne's winter temperatures were the lowest in five years, Canberra eight years, and Sydney 10 years.

Another feature of winter which may have influenced the feeling it was cold was multiple newsworthy snowfalls.

This included the low-level falls on the weekend, and the early August snowstorm in northern New South Wales which was the heaviest in four decades.

For our major alpine resorts, this winter also saw a return to form after two poor years with limited skiing. 

Last week's storm lifted the natural snow depth about 10 per cent above average for higher resorts.

However, lower alpine mountains, including Mt Buller, have once again recorded a subpar season snow depth.

Drought relief after dry autumn

A more critical element of the season for much of southern Australia struggling through a prolonged drought was precipitation.

And in a marked improvement compared to recent dry seasons, winter rainfall anomalies for southern states were mostly negligible.

One unusual feature though was how uniform rainfall was — meaning only small patches of the country observed an unusually wet or dry season, which is rare for a country as large as Australia where rain is infamously variable.

An area which did see exceptional rain was the central NSW coast — Sydney's Observatory Hill station received 567 millimetres, 257mm above average and the wettest winter in 18 years.

The drenching was sufficient for Sydney to claim the wettest capital trophy for the second consecutive winter.

Perth, which is normally our wettest capital in the cooler months, was not far behind with 528mm — although this figure is an estimate after a weather station malfunction in June and July.

While Perth's approximate total was only moderately above the long-term average by 57mm, the region's decline in rain from climate change since the mid-20th century ensured the city's wettest winter in 29 years.

All other capitals recorded rainfall within 50mm of normal.

The national rain figure, the mean across the whole country, was also near normal —58mm against an average of 63mm.

Although winter rain was unremarkable, a wet spring is still highly favoured thanks largely to a well-established negative Indian Ocean Dipole.