Coogee Beach looked like a construction site - or a popular holiday destination for heavy machinery - as 12 large earth movers, two vacuum trucks and a crew of 35 worked to restore the beach to its pre-storm glory.

Broken Hill's water reserves are down to about 4 per cent amid forecasts the town will be without water by the end of the year.

A high-pressure system "as big as Australia" could bring Sydney's warmest patch of weather since April, while most of the country will go for a week with little rain.

Sydney will likely come close to notching its hottest day this late in the summer for 12 years - and there won't be much early relief.

A powerful cold front is set to bring 'dangerous' conditions to large parts of south-eastern Australia in coming days and send temperatures plummeting in Sydney.

Enjoy the sunshine at the start of this week, as the the grey clouds and rain that have become all-too-familiar visitors in recent times are due to roll in again come Wednesday.

Unprecedented rain in Japan unleashed heavy floods that tore houses from their foundations, uprooted trees and forced thousands from their homes.

Sydney may be scorching right now, but be warned - the worst is yet to come.

Electricity demand surged to its highest in Sydney and the rest of the state for the summer as a burst of inland heat sent the mercury into the low 40s in the city's west.

They said it would never fill. Now it has spilled.

Sydney awoke to a frigid Saturday morning, with temperatures dipping to a brisk 7.3 degrees in the CBD at 7:15am.

Sydney's late-summer spell of unusual warmth shows little sign of making way for autumn with another week of mild to hot weather ahead.

Melbourne could be hit with floods this week as recent rainfall puts pressure on catchments at capacity.

Three days of heavy rain in mid-April were enough to make it Sydney's wettest autumn in 12 years but conditions have largely dried up since.

Sydney sweated through its hottest December night in 15 years overnight, but a cool change - and a good drenching - is on its way.

Sydneysiders got down to cleaning up their damaged properties on Friday after destructive winds accompanying a sudden cool change broke up the 40-degree heat a day earlier.

The remarkable global heat for 2015 is not yet over and already forecasters are predicting next year will be hotter again - marking three years in a row of record annual warmth.

It was the near miss that went viral after a lightning bolt got strikingly close to a Qantas jet mid-air. A few months later and it has happened again.

It was a day which saw tops of 39.2 degrees in the city and 40.7 in the west, and ended dramatically with severe thunderstorm warnings across the west.

Sydney is in for gusty winds on Wednesday, followed by chilly temperatures next week as Winter makes itself known.

After 16 years of observations, the world's new lightning capital has been named.

It's Big Wednesday in Sydney, where large and powerful waves are pounding the coastline and giving surfers a reason to grin.

The mercury dropped to -5.1 degrees on Sunday morning, but it felt even colder, with an apparent temperative of -8.6 degrees just before the sun came up.

Can't make it to the beach because of work? Don't fret, there's some excellent weather coming this weekend.

Australia's main ski resorts are anxious for a change in the weather, with a lack of recent snow falls limiting their operations just as school holidays loom in NSW and Victoria.