Cyclones and the wet season in northern Australia

By Julia · weather-au.com editorial team · Published 16 October 2026

The season has fixed dates

The Australian cyclone season runs from 1 November to 30 April. Those dates are not a formality: tropical cyclones need sea surface temperatures above roughly 26.5 degrees, and the waters off the north only hold that heat during the southern summer.

An average season brings about a dozen tropical cyclones to the Australian region, of which four or so cross the coast. The busiest areas are the Pilbara and Kimberley coasts of Western Australia, the Top End, and the Queensland coast between Cairns and Mackay.

Outside those months the north is dry and remarkably stable, which is why the tourist season in Darwin and Broome is the southern winter. The same place that is unvisitable in February is at its best in July.

How the Australian categories work

Australia uses its own five-category scale, and it is not the Saffir-Simpson scale used in the Atlantic. Here the categories are based on the strongest gusts: category 1 means gusts below 125 km/h, category 3 starts around 165 km/h, and category 5 means gusts above 280 km/h.

A category 2 system in the Australian sense is therefore not a mild event. It brings damaging winds, a storm surge and the kind of rainfall that cuts roads for days, which is why the Bureau of Meteorology issues watches 48 hours ahead and warnings within 24 hours.

The most destructive element is often not the wind but the water: a surge on a high tide, or a slow-moving system that drops several hundred millimetres inland after landfall. Flood warnings usually outlive the cyclone warning by a week.

The build-up, then the monsoon

Between October and December the north goes through the build-up: humidity climbs, afternoon temperatures sit in the mid-thirties, and towering storms appear each afternoon without a monsoon in sight. Locals call this the most trying part of the year, and the storms over the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin are reliable enough to have a name, Hector.

The monsoon itself usually arrives at Darwin around late December, bringing a wind shift to the west and days of continuous rain rather than afternoon storms. It then pulses: a week of rain, a drier break, another burst, until it withdraws in March or April.

For travel this distinction matters more than a monthly average. A December afternoon storm clears in an hour; a monsoon burst in January can keep a road closed for days. Our hourly forecast separates the two better than any seasonal table.

Reading our pages in the tropics

The sixteen-day forecast is honest about what it can and cannot do up north. The temperature spread in the wet season is small, so look at rainfall and humidity instead: a run of days above 80 per cent humidity with daily totals above 20 millimetres means the monsoon is active.

During cyclone watches the official source is always the Bureau of Meteorology, whose track maps and warnings take precedence over any forecast model output. We relay the forecast, not the warning.

Because the north runs on its own clock, each town page carries its own local time: Darwin, Broome and Cairns sit in three different time zones, and the forecast hours are those of the place you are looking at, not of Sydney.