Running hot and cold this Christmas, weather permitting

WITH the exception of Sydneysiders, the weather forecast this summer won't add to the holiday cheer of most Australians.

WITH the exception of Sydneysiders, the weather forecast this summer won't add to the holiday cheer of most Australians.

Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart can expect to be hotter and mostly drier, compounding the threat of bushfires.

Storm-hit Brisbane will be wetter and cooler than usual while tropical north Queensland will swelter in unusually high temperatures with less rain.

Warmer sea temperatures on either side of the continent - especially in the Indian Ocean - are the cause as the Bureau of Meteorology's seasonal outlook for summer presents a mixed forecast from region to region.

GRAPHIC: Weather stats

After the big wet that cycled through southern Queensland and northern NSW over the past two summers, driven by a La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific, Brisbane has a 70 per cent chance of getting above median rainfall. This translates into a 60 to 70 per cent chance summer in southeast Queensland and northeast NSW will be cooler than usual.

VIDEO: Australia's summer forecast

The opposite applies in the south of the continent. Southern South Australia, taking in Adelaide, southern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, have a 60 per cent chance of higher-than-usual maximum temperatures. For the south and west of Western Australia, this rises to 80 per cent, though these areas have up to a 75 per cent chance of more rain than usual.

Victorian Fire Services Commissioner Craig Lapsley warned this week that the likelihood of consistent temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s, as well as above-average minimums, were part of the recipe of a bad bushfire season in that state.

The good news for Sydney is that it can expect a return to a more traditional, beach-friendly summer, warmer than those of the past two years.

While a drought-inducing El Nino weather pattern failed to form in the Pacific, warmer-than-average tropical sea temperatures would persist into the New Year. Australia's summer weather would be more heavily influenced by higher seawater temperature in the Indian Ocean, according to the weather bureau's manager of climate prediction services, Andrew Watkins.

He said the threat of grassfire in the south of the continent was fuelled by the "curing" of undergrowth between August and October, in the third-warmest spring on record.