BAMOS February 2026
10 Article
Australian early-to-mid summer 2025-26: a land divided by polarising extremes
Corey Robinson, Monash University( corey. robinson @ monash. edu)
Fire, floods, heatwaves and tropical cyclones— summer in Australia is characterised by a variety of extreme weather conditions, and we saw destructive examples of these between December 2025 and January 2026.
Northern Queensland faced major floods in a soaking start to the monsoon season. Tropical Cyclone Luana impacted northwestern Australia, resulting in heavy rainfall and flooding, while scorching heat and fires swept through the southeast.
Although it may seem unusual to suggest that wet weather in the northwest and hot weather in the southeast are physically connected, this might have been the case. Here, we provide a chronological overview of Australia’ s December 2025 – late January 2026 extremes and discuss this plausible connection in further detail.
North Queensland floods( late December 2025 – early January 2026)
The Bureau of Meteorology declared the start of the Australian monsoon on 23 December. While this timing is close to typical, large areas of the continent saw heightened rainfall from the onset( Figure 1). This was particularly notable in northwest Queensland, where a quasi-stationary monsoon low-pressure system brought over 400 mm of rainfall in the final week of December. The associated flooding, unfortunately, resulted in one fatality, multiple road closures and significant cattle loss.
Slow-moving low-pressure systems are particularly destructive, as they can persist over multiple days, delivering huge rainfall totals, which can lead to flooding. Similar events in North Queensland have been commonplace in recent years, including Cyclone Jasper in December 2023, the North Queensland floods in January – February 2019 and in January – February 2025.
First heatwave and bushfires in the southeast( early January 2026)
In stark contrast to the north, the southern and central regions of Australia were unusually dry in early summer( Figure 1), driven by strong and persistent high-pressure systems. This led to numerous record-breaking heatwaves and catastrophic fires, particularly in Victoria.
The first heatwave began around 5 January, with temperatures exceeding 40 ° C in multiple cities over the coming days: Adelaide, with 43.2 ° C and 43.3 ° C on the 7th and 8th, respectively, Melbourne, with 42.9 ° C on the 9th, and Sydney with 42.2 ° C on the 10th. These hot, dry conditions, along with gusty northwesterly winds in rain-deficient regions, no doubt contributed to the outbreak of bushfires beginning 7 January, particularly in Victoria. The fires moved rapidly across the state, tearing through 400,000 hectares, destroying 250 homes and claiming one life.
Figure 1: Rainfall deciles over December 2025 – January 2026. Credit: Bureau of Meteorology
Illustrative representation of bushfires in Australia. Credit: pexels
Flash floods on the Great Ocean Road and in Sydney( mid- January 2026)
While southern Australia was particularly dry in January, a handful of extreme rainfall events occurred locally across the state. The most significant is perhaps the flooding in the Lorne and the Wye River area in coastal Victoria. On 15 January, persistent thunderstorms produced a remarkable 175 mm of rainfall within 6 hours at Mount Cowley, creating dramatic scenes such as cars swept out to sea. This rainfall compounded on the recent bushfires in the Otways region in previous days, affecting communities already under pressure.
Flash flooding also occurred around Sydney and on the Central Coast a few days later. Pearl Beach recorded 250 mm and Woy Woy 241.5 mm in the 24 hours to 9 am 18 January, while a non- Bureau site at Palm Beach recorded 346 mm in the same period.