https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCHIRBmNMO5/?igsh=MTIzNmNuYzhjZmZoOA== 

Telegraft on Malaga floods. Updated on 14th.

Spain is still reeling from recent floods that killed over 200 people.

"Residents in Malaga were recovering from heavy flooding after a deluge of up to 180mm of rainfall hit the southern Spanish region in just 12 hours on Wednesday.

Video footage shared on social media showed water cascading through the streets as public transport was suspended in the metropolitan and several neighbourhoods were evacuated.

The swollen Benamargosa river swept dozens of cars away after bursting its banks as heavy rain caused havoc in southern and eastern Spain."

Why has Spain had so much flooding in Malaga and Valencia?

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/why-spain-flooding-dana-115922793.html 

Dreadful. Incredible as well.   😞 

The Himawari 9 satellite image clearly shows the 1000km smoke plume, which I can see on the western horizon from Perth. 

Thunderstorms today and some rain forecast for Friday and Saturday with temps back down to the mid 20’s, but will pop back about 30c again by Sunday.

It’s not so unusual to get hot days in November in Sydney..basically it’s to do with how the high pressure ridge pushes across Australia at this time of year. The higher placement of the ridge allows for a NW wind drag from the centre of Australia as the high exits Australia and enters the Tasman sea. When the monsoon really ramps up over the top end, it has the effect of squashing the high pressure ridge south and rather than NW winds around the high, you get damp humid easterlies which dominate Sydney’s weather between January and March. This is why the bushfire season in Sydney is generally from mid October to early January.

Yes, I can see that summer has arrived big time Down Under and of course, we also have to bear in mind that you're not even into your official meteorological summer just yet (that will happen at the same time as when we enter our own meteorological winter here in the Northern Hemisphere on 1 December).

I therefore hate to imagine what it will be like in your high summer period in January and February as I would imagine that this could be a very scary prospect for you.

Conditions in Sydney after the new year tend to be surprisingly cloudy and wet with high humidity and temps between 25c to 28c. We don’t have the Mediterranean climate Perth and Adelaide have, it’s quite oceanic. The number of times I have been down to circular quay / opera house area and seen glum tourists trudging around in the summer rain. Bushfires around Sydney in Feb and March are unheard of, I have been around here for over 20 years and I have never known it. Having said that temps of around 40c can pop up anytime in the summer, but much more common early.

The cricket test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground is always first week of January and is notorious for wet weather.

If all of that happened here, we would just call that a front-loaded summer but I would imagine that the ENSO state (La Nina/El Nino) would be a major factor here as well.

Here in the UK, we tend to use that as one of the global factors for what our winter in particular might be like. For that, we tend to base that on the conditions during the Northern Hemisphere winter when that is at its peak and since we are about to enter our winter, we are now going into the time of year when that peak would be expected to occur.

However, the UK is a lot further away from the ENSO region than Australia and so, I would expect Australia to be more greatly impacted by that in terms of what its summer will be like.

As far as I know, an El Nino tends to increase the risk of drought and bushfires in Australia whereas La Nina tends to result in wetter weather in Australia, thus increasing the risk of flooding but reducing the risk of drought or bushfires.

At the moment, La Nina has been struggling to form and this looks as though we will be in weak La Nina at most or possibly even ENSO neutral over the course of the coming Northern Hemisphere winter and Southern Hemisphere summer.

It will therefore be interesting to see the effect which this goes on to have on your summer as it would appear as though these bushfires and extremes in temperatures across Australia could at least be partly the result of La Nina failing to take hold as expected. 

Good to have a fellow Aussie here. The January to March period over here in the west is so dry. Not unusual to go the 3 months without any rainfall. Easterly winds dominate bringing the dry heat from the centre. We rely on the sea breezes to alleviate the heat. We are expecting 38c tomorrow. The first hot day of the summer. 

As a youngish lad, I spent close to 2 years travelling around the world from early 1993 to late 1994. 5 months of that was spent living and working in Sydney - from November 93 to March 94. That coincided with the famous bush fires after a prolonged spell of hot dry weather. The fires covered a large area of the eastern seaboard and inland ranges but also spread into Sydney itself. I was living in Coogee Bay which was one of the only parts of Sydney not covered in a pall of smoke. But I was working in the city and we didn't see the sun in our office for a few days because of this. The smell of burning wood was overwhelming too. 

So I experienced quite a long spell of real summer Sydney heat but I do remember that after the fires, the weather reverted to warm and showery - often into the mid to high 20s by day and with fresh easterly sea breezes. 

EDIT: Just found this on Wikipedia ....

This was the only occasion in which a major city, Sydney, had been threatened with total isolation due to fire. At the peak of the fires only the Hume Highway to the southwest remained open.[citation needed] All other road and rail routes out of Sydney were closed. Residents of the entire metropolitan area of Sydney had to contend with ash raining down on them, and the sky remained a blazing orange colour for days afterwards.

Obviously Melbourne is cooler than Perth and Sydney, and although we have had 37c before in November we often also have cold wet days around 13 or 14c, but not this year. The warm days were mid-30s but the "cool" days were down to maybe 19c and even where my sister-in-law lives 600m ASL in Mount Macedon it was over 30c on some days, which is unusual before summer starts.

Fingers crossed for all that there is some rain soon as hopefully La Nina will kick in...

Unsually mild.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/new-york/10021/weather-forecast/349727 

NYC in early Feb 1991 was 21C while here -5C but this time we not get subzero temps with snow while there it warmer than here thanks to nasty HP blocking it.

And then this (albeit upstate)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c20wxn8v4l8o 

(I would love the UK to get that)

Although on some occasions the seabreeze can be later than expected or the NW can be stronger, but plus 40c temps not expected to make the coast this time.

It was 47c to 48c in some rural Victorian and NSW places yesterday, but records didn't tumble.

Some bushfire outbreaks in Vic and NSW so hopefully they get on top of those quickly.

It's been a hot a humid December so far for Sydney. At times it has felt quite like Darwin or Singapore.

So it will be the usual Xmas day at Dee Why beach for us.

https://www.newsflare.com/video/636399/mother-saves-daughter-from-flying-debris-as-severe-weather-hits-southern-china?origin=bestsellingyear 

Just from a totally meteorological point of view, it is incredible to watch the sliding door being suddenly pull outwards (obviously due to a rapid pressure drop outside) but imploding inwards as pressure suddenly rose again. It makes me wonder if there was even if that door was even just slightly open, even by a millimeter or two, would this have happened? 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kvlkvzdgzo 

That would typically mean the end of winter for us - time will tell if it's the case this time!

Unusual I'm sure but probably not unheard of. I don't watch too closely but I have seen occasional Summer highs in the low 20s in Stanley so I expect it would have coincided with a cooler winter spell in Riyadh at some point.

I see that Mount Pleasant has daily records on weatheronline and enjoyed a high of 24C on Christmas Day. Looks like it has warmer summers than Stanley. Presumably it is more sheltered from sea breezes.