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Halfway into summer, and the season has thrown up a range of extremes across the country — from heavy rainfall and flooding, to a delayed monsoon in the north and extreme heatwaves in the west.
Much of Victoria and South Australia have already received their entire summer's worth of rainfall.
Other regions — including much of western WA and parts of Australia's tropics — have a lot of making up to do if they are to receive their normal rainfall for the season.
So what could be in store for the rest of the summer?
A dry signal for February
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the atmosphere, it is impossible to accurately predict the specific weather events that will play on beyond the next week or so.
But the Bureau of Meteorology's latest long range outlook gives a clue as to how the odds are stacked.
For the final week of January up to February 3, the models are currently tipping wetter-than-normal conditions to continue through parts of central and eastern Australia, while the run of drier-than-normal conditions is likely to continue for Western Australia's west coast.
But by February, a drier signal is favoured by outlooks for much of northern Australia.
This is most emphatic for northern parts of WA and the NT, which Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Caitlin Minney said was due to the monsoon.
"While [the outlook] is favouring wetter-than-median conditions for the rest of January … it's unfavourable for rain in the west going into February," she said.
"This is likely due to the forecast position of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which is predicted to be in the western hemisphere by February, which is typically unfavourable for monsoon activity over northern Australia."
In the eastern states, however, as well as parts of southern WA, the risk of it being wetter or drier than normal is about even.
Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Caitlin Minney said it meant rainfall totals could go either way at this point.
"At the moment, many areas have a range of outcomes for rainfall that could be occurring from very wet to very dry," she said.
This uncertain forecast is common without a strong climate driver controlling the general pattern, since El Niño typically does not impact Australia's rain in summer, and the positive Indian Ocean Dipole event is now coming to its end.
Ms Minney said it was also important to remember drier-than-normal odds did not equal no rainfall at all, nor was it guaranteed.
"So even those regions that are coming up as brown or yellow [on the rainfall outlook], that sort of 60 per cent or even 80 per cent chance of below-average rainfall, that doesn't mean that above-average rainfall can't happen," she said.
"It has happened in the past that there have been storms that has meant that the rainfall totals are different to the long-range forecast."
The summer months are the wettest time of year for northern and central Australia, and much of Queensland and New South Wales.
A warmer-than-normal outlook
For temperature forecasts, the outlooks show a stronger signal.
Large portions of the country are expected to be cooler than normal for the two weeks starting January 23.
But February outlooks for maximum temperatures have nearly the whole country coloured in a deep maroon, meaning it is very likely to be warmer than normal, on average, across the month.
"Notably, for both minimums and maximums, it is four times more likely to have unusually high minimum and maximum temperatures, so those are minimums and maximums in the top 20 per cent of records," Ms Minney said.
Ms Minney said the strongest driver of the warmer-than-normal odds were climate change, and El Niño, which was still underway in the Pacific.
"So climate change is the main driver of the warmer-than-average temperatures that we've been seeing on long-range forecasts for quite a while, as well as the El Niño, which is predicted to persist into autumn," she said.
The long-range outlooks for February have had a relatively high accuracy in the past for temperature.
But the success rate for rainfall prediction varies across the country, from a high hit-rate in Queensland and northern Australia, to low accuracy over southern WA, and parts of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.