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Monsoonal flow with a low is bringing heavy rain & storms to north Qld & northeast NT. An unstable airmass over inland WA is triggering showers & storms. Dry & clear for southeast Aust & SA under high pressure. Cool S'ly winds bring a few showers to north coastal NSW & SE Qld.
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27 Dec 2025, 10:30PM UTC
Flooding rain over north Queensland
More than 100mm of rain has fallen over some part of northwest Qld for each of the last 6 days. East Qld hasn't been much drier, with every day except the 24 hours to 9am on the 27th also seeing 100mm+ of rain. And further heavy rain is forecast over the coming week. Rivers are rising, with the Gregory River in northwest Qld already at major flood levels. The culprit in the northwest has been a low pressure system lingering over the Gulf Country. This drifted off to the western Top End in the latter part of the Christmas week but is now back with a vengeance, aided by a monsoon trough. In the east, last week's rain was triggered by an active trough moving northward. This has now stalled near the northeast Qld coast and will weaken. But as extremely humid air flows from the Coral Sea into the low or "landphoon" over northwest Qld, it will be uplifted over the tablelands and trigger heavy rain and a "quasi monsoon" in the region between Cooktown and Townsville. The animation below shows one model's prediction of daily rainfall over the coming week. Image: Animation of 24-hour rainfall over the coming week, according to the ECMWF model with a north Qld "landphoon." Source: Weatherzone. Some notable stats that have already occurred include the heaviest December rain since: At least 1978 for Cloncurry Airport. The 117.6mm to 9am on the 26th was the heaviest December rain on record for the station which opened in 1978. (It was also the heaviest for any month since 2019). 2011 for Gregory Downs on the 27th with 103mm. 2012 for Richmond on the 27th with 52.9mm. 2013 for Normanton on 28th with 92.4mm. In the 24 hours to 9am today, Cardwell Gap was the wettest location in Australia with 217mm of rain recorded, 145mm of which fell in 3 hours late last night. Heavy rain is, of course, not unusual for the tropics in the summer. However, December is quite early in the season for this intensity of rain over the northwest, as evidenced by the above stats. Rainfall totals over the coming days are likely to be even higher with daily falls of 200-300mm expected over some areas. The wettest period, for both northwest and northeast Qld, looks like Sunday into Tuesday night. By the end of the month, some locations could accumulate nearly half a metre of rain, bringing December totals to well above average. There'll be an easing trend later in the week before another trough moving in from the west enhances rainfall again around the weekend before finally sending a drier change over most of Qld next week. Fossickers in the northwest can then move in to see what garnets, gold, amethyst or dinosaur fossils might have been unearthed. Keep up-to-date with the latest warnings and forecasts at: https://www.weatherzone.com.au/warnings and https://www.weatherzone.com.au/qld Image: Satellite and radar animation in the 12 hours to Sunday 28th morning, showing a low over the Gulf Country and rain and storms streaming over north Qld and the northeast NT. Source: Weatherzone. Image: Forecast district map of Qld. The Gulf Country, North West, Central West, Northern Goldfields and Upper Flinders, North Tropical Coast and Tablelands, and Herbert and Lower Burdekin will be the wettest areas in the coming few days. Source: Bureau of Meteorology.
25 Dec 2025, 11:13PM UTC
How Boxing Day weather looks across Australia
Boxing Day, traditionally linked to the giving of “Christmas boxes” to servants and tradespeople in Britain, has evolved into one of Australia’s most energetic public holidays. Today it’s about motion, with the Sydney–Hobart fleet departing Sydney Heads at 1pm, crowds pouring into the MCG, beaches filling early and eskies opening by midday. This Friday 26th delivers a sharp contrast nationwide, with cooler southerly air in the south, heat inland, and monsoonal moisture fuelling showers and thunderstorms across northern Australia. Wherever you are, the weather will quietly shape how Boxing Day is spent. Down south, conditions favour slower starts and layered clothing. Melbourne wakes to brisk southerlies and low cloud, with cool conditions for Test cricket spectators in the stands. Hobart remains grey and cool with a slight chance of a morning shower, while Adelaide and Perth enjoy far more inviting Boxing Day weather — sunny, warm and well suited to barbecues and beach visits. In Sydney, harbour conditions remain lively for the yacht race, with the breeze favouring coastal walks over long outdoor lunches. Canberra enjoys a sunny Boxing Day with mild temperatures in the low 20s, well suited to outdoor sport and park visits, while Brisbane remains mostly cloudy and humid, reaching the high 20s. Further north, Boxing Day is unmistakably wet season. Darwin remains active with heavy showers and thunderstorms likely, encouraging a slower pace and indoor breaks between downpours. Overall, it’s a Boxing Day that reflects the many faces of an Australian summer, whether spent at major events, outdoors or with family.
24 Dec 2025, 8:02PM UTC
White Christmas in Tasmania as summer snowfalls continue
It's a white Christmas in the heart of summer in Australia's southernmost state, as snow falls in elevated parts of Tasmania this Thursday, December 25, 2025. Snow is falling as low as 700 metres above sea level on Christmas morning, meaning that the summit of 1271m kunanyi/Mt Wellington above Hobart is receiving its fair share of snowflakes. Image: The sun tries to break through snow-bearing clouds early on Christmas morning 2025 on kunanyi/Mt Wellington. Source: Hobartcity.com.au. This Christmas morning snowfalls are a continuation of a Tasmanian cold outbreak that started late on Tuesday and continued through Wednesday. You can see the moisture-laden airmass responsible for the Christmas morning snowfalls surging towards Tasmania and coastal parts of the SE mainland in the loop below. The speckled cloud pattern is typically associated with airmasses with polar origins. Image: Four-hour combined satellite and radar loop over Tasmania on the morning of Thursday, December 25, 2025. Why is it snowing in the Australian summer? Summer snow is far from a rare event in the highest parts of Tasmania and Australia's southeast mainland, and tends to occur at least once each summer. Indeed, Tasmania saw snow a week ago even as bushfires burned in the state’s east, while snow was reported at the mainland ski resorts on December 1. Even in Australia's warmest and driest year on record in 2019, heavy snow fell on the mainland high country in December. Image: A slightly blurred image due to the Christmas Day snowflakes sticking to the screen at the Mt Mawson shelter, Tasmania, on Thursday, December 25, 2025. Source: Mt Mawson. While the cold fronts that circulate the Southern Ocean tend to slip southwards during the Australian summer, the occasional pool of unstable polar air is always a chance to push northwards at this time of year. That’s what has happened this week, and it’s largely thanks to the jet stream – the swift-moving "river" of air high in the atmosphere which generally blows from west to east. The jet stream tends to move in waves in what is known a meridional pattern, sharply dipping to the north and south as it moves east. This week, the meridional pattern has allowed cold air to be dragged up over Tasmania.