One was close to Cocos Keeling Island and the other was located around 200 kilometres north-west of Broome.

Very heavy rain fell at Cocos Island and the month's total of 542mm was the second highest on record for January in 119 years of records.

The other cyclone moved inland and decayed but was enough to set up heatwave conditions in South Eastern Australia, where maximum temperatures reached 44 degrees in the Mallee, 42 degrees at Shepparton and Yarrawonga and just 40 degrees in Wangaratta and Albury on Monday, January 25.

A rather extensive deep low pressure trough, which had originated over inland Western Australia where humid unsettled conditions with isolated thunderstorms were occurring, crossed the Albury-Wodonga region on the Tuesday, bringing patchy rain and some thunderstorms, with rainfalls 15 to 20mm.

Humidity levels reached very high values, with dew point temperatures rising to 22 degrees at Wangaratta in the afternoon after the showers had cleared.

Along the Western Australian coast, near both Port Hedland and Robourne, there has been exceptionally high sea surface temperatures this month - over three degrees above the normal for the month of January.

The area of well above normal sea surface temperatures off the coast of Western Australia has increased the past two days, with increasing rainfall in the Kimberley region and towards Darwin, which has just exceeded its January average rainfall of 413mm.

During the last 10 days, the sea surface temperatures from Gabo Island along the NSW Coast to near Sydney has increased to be more than two degrees above normal. Winds will remain easterly the next few days over Victoria and NSW, as a strong high pressure parks itself well south-east of Tasmania, and very humid conditions will prevail.

The approaching low pressure trough looks set to be cradled by this strong high pressure system, resulting in moderate to heavy rain in Victoria and the southern half of NSW by the end of January and more of the same around February 3.

The weather profiles this January in NSW and Victoria have been very similar to that of January 1954.

In Victoria, there was heatwave conditions from January 13-16,1954, and again from January 24-27, 1954, which also occurred this month close to these dates in 1954.

There was heavy rain in North East Victoria and in East Gippsland during the period January 28-31,1954.

In mid-February of 1954, there were flood rains in the Otway Peninsula and it does remain to be seen next mid-February if this happens again after the flood rains on the Otway Peninsula on January 4 this year.