Strong winds, mainly from a south-west direction, have been a notable feature of weather conditions during the past three weeks in North East Victoria.
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In addition, there has not been much rainfall since the end of October.
Wind gusts have exceeded 75 kilometres per hour on several days and more than 120 km/h at Alpine resorts.
Further south, Wilsons Promontory recorded a gust of 131 km/h on December 6, and for 10 hours, the winds were gusting at over 100 km/h.
On November 29, the Prom recorded a maximum gust of 157 km/h.
The disturbed conditions last weekend (December 5 and 6) were due to a deep low pressure of central pressure, 960 mbs, centred south of Tasmania.
Temperatures have been below the December normal over Victoria and the southern half of NSW for most of this month to date.
Behind this deep low pressure, a strong high-pressure system has advanced to well south of The Bight, and the wild conditions have eased the past two days.
Many locations then recorded unusually cold mornings for December. Deniliquin recorded a minimum temperature of 4.6 degrees on Tuesday, December 8, and this made it the coldest December morning since 4.4 on December 15, 1903.
This low December temperature at Deniliquin followed a near-record high temperature for November of 44.2 on the 28th.
Looking at past cases when very high November temperatures were followed by near-record low December minimum temperatures a week or so later in December in Deniliquin. There were only four of them dating back to 1858 in Deniliquin. These were in 1878, 1883, 1891 and 1980. All four occasions led to a summer season much warmer than normal in Victoria and NSW, with the highest temperatures above 40 degrees about December 20-22, near the end of December, mid to late January and the first and third weeks of February.
A monsoonal low pressure off the coast of northern Western Australia has delivered the first heavy rains of this coming wet season.
