Using AWN
AWN is a HUGE site (346,055 files as at 21/7/2011) but finding your way around is easy if you follow this short guide.
- Use the menu and sub-menus at the top of each screen to go to AWN's main sections.
- Some pages that don't
have the menu bar at the top open in a new window.
- The main weather pages have a Links to other sites box that leads you to links to hundreds of relevant sites outside AWN.
- The site is best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or greater.
Finding what you want
- Forecasts: Weather warnings and forecasts for all Australia, Bureau 7-day OCF guidance forecasts for up to a week for over 600 locations, and computer model forecasts of rain and more.
- Current: The weather today and right now. Radar, lightning, satellite images, detailed rainfall maps, and weather readings from all Australian stations. AWN also presents a huge range of synoptic charts covering the whole world but with particular emphasis on Australia.
- Daily Weather Summaries: Charts, statistics and news stories give the most detailed national weather coverage available in one place for every day back to 1996. Today's is here.
- Recent & Climate: Rainfall, temperature and more for every Australian station going back to the beginning of weather records. Long-term averages, charts, climate change, El Nino.
- Severe: Current and past cyclones, floods, droughts, thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, snowstorms, bushfires, gales and high seas.
- Know-how: How the weather works; observing, analysing and forecasting the weather as well as tech stuff for those keen to expand their weather knowledge.
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Site news
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- 8 May 2012 - Forecasts: Added Australian Alps weather forecasts and observations links to the Forecast Matrix.
- 3 May 2012 - Radar: The radar pages of the site, including those in the mobile phone section, have been updated and links corrected. The new Mt Koonya dopler radar near Hobart is now available.
- 17 April 2012 - Satellite cloud images: A number of changes have been made to our Current Weather main page, giving various options for satellite images and animations.
- 17 April 2012 - New radar for Tasmania. A new doppler radar for Tasmania's southeast is currently undergoing evaluation at Mt Koonya on the Tasman Peninsula, NW of Port Arthur. The radar was commissioned on 21 March and is expected to be operational by the end of this month. It will replace the Hobart windfinding radar and give much wider coverage of the whole southeast of the island, extending north to St Helens, NW to the Central Plateau and west to about Low Rocky Point.
- 17 April 2012 - Forecast Explorer available for SA and TAS. The roll-out of the BoM's Next Generation Forecast and Warning System (NexGen) continues with forecasts now available in graphical form for SA and TAS as well as NSW and VIC. Roll-out of new text forecasts and warnings are due in WA late this year, in QLD late 2013 and the NT late 2014, with graphical Forecasts Explorers for those states following about a year after the text-based forecasts. The Explorers for SA and TAS have been added to AWN's main forecast grid.
While the charts in Forecast Explorer may look like commonly available forecast model charts, they are actually very different. Firstly, they represent the combined opinions of many computer models, weighted for accuracy of recent performance (like AWN's OCF forecasts), and secondly, they have had manual input from professional forecasters at the Bureau.
The Bureau's site has information on the Nexgen system, and help in working with Forecast Explorer.
- 21 February 2012 - Detailed Annual Climate Summary for 2011 available. The Bureau of Meteorology's annual summary of climate and weather for last year is now available.
It contains descriptions of Australia's rainfall and temperature patterns during the year, and documents significant weather and climate events.
It can be downloaded from here
where there are also links to previous annual summaries back to 2001.
- 12 January 2012 - Record cold temperatures in SE states. A cold outbreak across Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales occurred on 11 and 12 January following a very strong cold front. On the 11th, the mercury only rose to 0.6C at Mt Hotham summit, setting a new record low maximum temperature for Australia by a considerable margin. Mt Buller and Mt Baw Baw also broke the previous January low maximum record of 1.9 held by Thredbo and Mt Hotham. Full details are in a Special Climate Statement issued by the Bureau of Meteorology today.
- 4 January 2012 - The Annual Climate Statement for 2011 has just been released by the Bureau of Meteorology. It's available online here. Main points:
**Consecutive La Niña events bring Australia's third-wettest year on record and second-highest two year total.
**La Niña brings heavy rain, eases drought and causes widespread flooding.
**Second-highest two-year (2010-2011) rainfall on record.
**Australia's first cooler than average year since 2001.
**Australia's coldest autumn since at least 1950.
**The 10 years from 2002 to 2011 Australia's equal-warmest 10-year period on record.
- 30 November - In a further upgrade to AWN's World Weather Maps, most of the charts now show improved temperature information as well as new information on humidity. For details, see the red box on the main map index page.
- 24 November - There's been an upgrade to AWN's World Weather Maps. All charts except those for oceans and the full globe now show isotherms (lines of equal temperature) more clearly and consistently than before. These make it much easier to identify frontal zones, areas where hot or cold airmasses are invading, and the areas of maximum heat or cold on any chart.
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