Australia

By Thomas Hough, Weatherzone.com.au --- Whilst summer is officially over, the summer like temperatures are not. Low pressure troughs are maintaining heat over the nation's interior this week, with cold fronts brushing the southeast.

Hobart has just broken a 79 year old record with its hottest March day yesterday, Saturday, a record that has stood since 1940.

So summer is over, but how did it compare with previous years?

It was certainly a hot one this year, with the average combined minimum and maximum temperatures coming in at 2.1 degrees above the average. This makes it Sydney's third hottest summer on record, behind only 1991 (+2.6 degrees) and 2017 (+2.8 degrees).

UPDATED 3:45pm Saturday --- Cyclone Oma has this afternoon been downgraded to an Ex-Tropical Cyclone by Australian forecasters at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

Blurb: New Zealand has some rough weather on Sunday as a cold southerly moves up the country bringing gales to some exposed central areas, pockets of rain and showers and a drop in temperatures.

Not everyone is highly impacted by it so we try to break down the many moving parts.

Cyclone Oma is not coming to New Zealand, despite some news headlines still saying otherwise. Latest data suggests Oma is now trapped in the Coral Sea well away from New Zealand and will likely remain there for a week.

A cold front and a large area of low pressure will affect the country this weekend, especially on Sunday/Monday as this new low deepens east of New Zealand, dredging up a cold southerly for some too.

We have humid northerlies around northern New Zealand right now but that is about to change as a southerly moves in on Friday and over the weekend.

Saturday may not be as wet as forecasts earlier indicated, we track the rain bands and showers.

Cyclone Oma is again a Severe Category 3 tropical storm in the Coral Sea but there is now finally increasing confidence Oma will not directly hit New Zealand and will weaken in the days ahead. It's been a long time coming but finally forecast computer models are aligning to suggest Cyclone Oma won't directly hit New Zealand but instead may offer some help at creating an even larger low in

Cyclone Oma made it back to “severe” Category 3 status overnight and this morning as it moves further away from New Caledonia and out into the open waters of the Coral Sea.