Australian Weather News   Site:  Home   Daily Weather Summaries    Search   Feedback   About   What's New
Weather:  Forecasts   Current   Recent & climate   Severe   Know-how   Mobile
 Charts   Radar & Lighting   10 Min obs   AWS obs   Synoptic obs   Rain & rivers   Daily data   Today's daily summary   Weather briefings   DA Data
Weather briefings: National  Sydney*  NSW Central Tablelands*  ACT/SE NSW*   (*=open in new window)
National Weather Briefing
Click image to open full size version, or animation
Latest Bureau synoptic chart Latest Infraret Satellite Image
Above: Latest 6-hourly surface chart. Click image for animation. BoM
Right: Latest hourly infrared satellite image. Click image for animation. BoM
Weatherzone composite radar and lightning tracker. Click for radar animation Rainfall for past hour

 

Weatherzone composite radar and lightning tracker. Click for radar animation

Above: Current radar. You must be a registered subscriber to Weatherzone (no cost) to view the image above. Weatherzone
Left: Current composite radar and lightning tracker. You must be a subscriber to Weatherzone Silver for full-sized and state lightning tracker images. Weatherzone
Right: Rainfall in past hour from automatic weather stations and telemetered raingauges. BoM

Latest hour's automatic weather station reports.

How to read the map below: The sample at left tells you all you need to know.
The black lines are isobars (lines of equal pressure) and the purple lines are isohyets (lines of equal rainfall). The isobars and isohyets are unreliable in areas where there are no observations.
The plot, or figures around the station, is for Kalgoorlie and shows a temperture of 14C, dew point 12C, 6mm of rain has fallen in the last hour, the pressure is 1004.4hPa and the wind is from the SW at 15 knots.
The maps are updated hourly around 20 past each hour. The time and date in the top left corner show the generation time in UTC -- add 10 hours to convert it to Eastern Standard Time.
Data is from the Bureau of Meteorology. Go here for the full range of AWN charts.

Latest analysis suite from COLA for 00utc (10am EST) or 12utc (10pm EST)
Tip: click images to open in new windows, then click between them for an overlay comparison
Surface and 1000/500hPa thickness analysis 500hPa analysis
Above: Surface and thickness analysis. Surface analysis shows isobars in colour. Thickness analysis shows distance the between the 1000 and 500hPa levels in tens of metres. This is a simple measure of the average temperature of the bottom 5km of the atmosphere. Below 534 is very cold, 534-540 cold, 540-546 cool, 546-552 mild, 552-558 warm, 558-564 very warm, 564-570 hot, above 570 very hot. COLA Above: 500hPa (5.5km) upper air analysis. Black lines are equivalent of isobars on a surface map, but show approximately how far above sea level the 500hPa pressure surface lies. The tags on the line are in tens of metres. Blue shading shows negative vorticity, associated with storms at upper levels. Red shading shows positive vorticity, associated with calm weather. COLA
Jet stream analysis 850hPa analysis
Above: Jet stream analysis. Purple shading shows strength of the wind at 200hPa (about 12km) measured in metres/second. 100m/s=about 200 knots or 360km/h. Streamlines indicate direction of windflow. COLA Above: 850hPa (about 1.5km) analysis. Coloured contours show temperature (°C). The 0° line is white. Green shading shows relative humidity. High levels of available moisture, when they coincide with strong ascent (see the panel below) usually produce heavy rain. The wind arrows show direction (towards the point) and strength (half feather=10 knots, full feather=20 knots). Both temperature and moisture are advected or blown in the direction of the wind. COLA
Instability and precipitable water analysis 700hPa vertical velocity analysis
Above: Instability and available moisture analysis. Yellow-brown shading is an index of the instability of the lowest 5km or so of the atmosphere (totals-totals index). An index of 40 to 50 suggests thunderstorm potential; above 55 suggests potential for severe thunderstorms. The colored contours indicate the total precipitable water in the atmosphere available to supply rainfall. Precipitable water is the total depth of liquid water that would result if all water vapor contained in a vertical column of air could be "wrung out", leaving the air completely dry. COLA Above: 700hPa (about 3km) vertical velocity analysis. This shows whether the air at a critical level in the lower atmosphere is rising or sinking. Dotted contours show rising air -- large values correspond with heavy rain if associated with moisture. Solid contours show sinking, stable air. COLA
Latest upper wind analysis from CIMSS
for 00utc (10am EST), 06utc (4pm EST), 12utc (10pm EST) and 18utc (4am EST)
Tip: click images to open in new windows, then click between them for an overlay comparison. Click here for more images.
Above: Satellite water vapour image and middle/upper atmosphere winds. The background image shows water vapour through the whole atmosphere -- white is moist, black is dry. The wind arrows show wind speed at different levels calculated by comparing cloud movement between different images taken about 30 minutes apart. Blue arrows are between 100 and 250hPa (~16 to 10km above the surface), yellow arrows 251 to 350hPa (~10 to 8km), and green arrows 351 to 500hPa (~8 to 6km). Click here for 24-hour archive.
Above: Satellite infrared image and lower/middle atmosphere winds. The background image shows cloud top temperature -- white is cold, black is warm. The wind arrows show wind speed at different levels calculated by comparing cloud movement between different images taken about 30 minutes apart. Blue arrows are between 400 and 599hPa (~7 to 4km above the surface), yellow arrows 600 to 799hPa (~4 to 2km), and green arrows 800 to 950hPa (~2 to 1km). Click here for 24 hour archive.