Freezing Sunday rain and winds saw Mothers Day picnics cancelled in the capital, while light snow dusted the mountains earlier in the morning.

As of 9am on Friday, Melbourne was the hottest capital city in Australia. And that's not about to change.

Canberra is bracing for a hot, dry weekend but a cool change could bring light rain on Christmas Day.

The Earth is in the midst of an usually long spell between ice ages and the build-up of carbon dioxide emissions through the burning of fossil fuels may postpone the next glaciation event by at much as 100,000 years, according to new climate research.

Monday morning's grey drizzly skies will usher in a warmer than average work week, before a turn for the chilly on Friday.

Meteorologists predicted the southerly buster would hit the city from about 5am on Wednesday, and that's precisely when it swept over Sydney Airport.

Parts of the ACT and Snowy Mountains have been warned to expect damaging winds in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Even Sydney's burst of early spring warmth couldn't escape the odd quirky political link.

Sydney could get its best weather for the year, with a week of gently warming days, lots of sunshine and little rain.

Queanbeyan and southern Canberra have been battered with a severe hail storm.

National records were smashed in the scorching start to March, as the driest January-February in parts of northern Australia for half a century led to an unusual build-up of heat, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

There's good news though - it won't get worse.

Sydney's main reservoir will begin spilling on Thursday, leading to minor flooding downstream, the Bureau of Meteorology says.

Was this Canberra's final hurrah before winter sets in?

Bitcoin provokes intense debate but one thing everyone agrees on is that it has become a staggering producer of climate wrecking carbon dioxide.

New plans for a $1.3 billion upgrade of Cleveland's new entry to North Stradbroke Island protects roosting areas, but not feeding grounds for shorebirds say Birdlife Australia.

Weather-related disasters in the past two decades have killed more than 600,000 people and inflicted economic losses estimated at trillions of dollars, the United Nations said Monday, warning that the frequency and impact of such events was set to rise.

You can hold off putting that extra doona on your bed for another week, Canberra.

El Nino assists January to have the biggest increase over the previous record for any month in a more than a century of records

The air quality has reached hazardous levels due to the storm, which is forecast to get worse before it gets better.

Moderate global warming that has occurred as a result of human emissions has quadrupled the frequency of certain heat extremes since the Industrial Revolution, study finds.

The El Nino weather pattern continues to consolidate in the Pacific with most climate models indicating it will extend well into next year, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Tropical Cyclone Zena weakened and moved quickly over Fiji without causing significant damage during the early hours of Thursday,

Top daily temperatures are on the rise for rest of the long weekend as clear skies and sunshine take the edge off the chilly start to winter.

Air quality deteriorated to poor and hazardous levels in some parts of Sydney on Thursday morning as controlled burns gave the city the distinctive smell of burning Australian bush.