The beginning of December marked the coldest start to any summer season for decades in most places around our regions, and many had maximum temperatures more than 15 degrees below December normals.
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The maximum temperature was the lowest on record at Wangaratta for December with only 13.5 degrees and also at Yarrawonga.
A deepening low pressure is currently approaching from the Southern Ocean and barometric pressures are falling rapidly with overcast skies and periods of light rain mainly in Victoria and the Riverina.
This week Thredbo station recorded a maximum temperature of minus 1.0 the lowest maximum for summer recorded anywhere in Australia.
The previous lowest summer maximum was minus 0.8 at Mt Buller on Christmas Day, 2006 and this followed heat wave conditions in our regions during the second week of December 2006 which we had here 10 days ago as well.
The heat did return by early January 2007 and it is likely there will be more very hot days by mid-December, continuing up to about December 21.
No rain has fallen north of Wagga to Sunday night but is expected in the next few days as an active front sweeps northwards.
During last week an active very cold frontal passage with very strong winds swept through our regions and left low temperatures with some snowfalls in the Highlands and unseasonably cold mornings.
Coonabarabran recorded a minimum temperature of 1.0 on Wednesday November 27 the coldest for late November since 0.5 in 1890.
December 1890 was then the coldest December on record after a very wet year.
Back in November 2006 there was a very cold morning of minus 0.6 during the third week of that month, however, the last few days of November 2006 and up to about December 11 there was excessive heat and widespread bush fires.
So this cold start to summer is expected to give away to more very hot days by mid-December in our regions.
The extreme heat in WA of the past several weeks eased a little early last week, but Perth had its hottest start to summer on record and Broome had a hot ending to November resulting in the hottest November in 130 years of records.
The previous hottest Novembers were in 1897, 1906, 1937, 1944 and 2009.
The Decembers following these episodes were hotter than normal in our regions and generally quite dry apart from some thunderstorms about Christmas.
Expect very hot days again mid-January up to the fourth week with some rain and thunderstorms again late January or early February in our regions.
