 Welcome to the January update of the season outlook. Some key points to note for the season outlook, bushfire conditions have recently started to increase across Victoria after significant mid-December rains in many areas. The Bureau of Meteorology's three-month outlook is for generally below-average rainfall and above-average temperatures. This is likely to result in significant drying with above-average evaporation rates. Victoria is likely to experience an above-average bushfire season, especially in East Gippsland. So starting by looking at the national context, these plots shake conditions in December compared to the long-term average. The top plot shows daily maximum temperatures were highest on record across large parts of northern and western Australia. Almost all of the continent was warmer or very much warmer than average. The bottom plot shows rainfall totals for December. It shows the area of Cape York Peninsula received the highest rainfall on record for December. The rest of the northern Australia was generally drier than average. Now looking closely at Victoria, we can see December daily maximum temperatures were highest on record for parts of East Gippsland. And overnight, December minimum temperatures were the highest on record for much of the state. Looking at rainfall, the top figure shows December was generally wetter than average in Victoria. The middle figure shows the totals for the three months of October to December were better than average for parts of the Mali and drier than average for most of the south of the state. The bottom figure shows annual rainfall for 2018. Almost the whole state was drier than average. With the recent above-average rainfalls in November and December, not being able to offset the dry winter and spring. Another way to consider rainfall is to look at the cumulative anomaly. This plot shows rainfall by emergency management regions, although the metro regions have all been combined together and labelled Port Phillip. The horizontal axis shows each month of the year and the vertical axis shows the rainfall deficiency in millimetres. On the vertical axis, zero represents average rainfall. The regional rainfalls are represented by the coloured lines on the chart. Where the coloured lines are horizontal, rainfall was average. Where the lines slope downward, below-average rainfall was recorded and where they slope upward, above-average rainfall was recorded. You can see that the Hume region finished the year with about 250 millimetre less rain than average. The modelled soil moisture is a useful indicator when considering flammability of vegetation. This top figure shows the modelled root zone soil moisture, which is the percentage of the top one metre of the soil profile as compared to average for this time of year. It seems to be a useful indicator of relative forest fuel flammability at a landscape scale. The red-brown colours indicate areas that are drier than average and the blue colours indicate wetter than average. During December, root zone soil moisture showed continued drying in the east of Gippsland. It also showed wetting in the north-east and north-west of the state. Note the recent rose-dale fire in Gippsland started and spread through areas of below or very much below-average soil moisture. January and February, typically the fastest drying rates that we'll see for the year due to increased solar radiation, hotter temperatures and less rain. The bottom figure on this slide shows deep soil moisture. This is a percentage of saturation of the soil profile from one metre deep to six metres deep. It probably indicates the underlying dryness that affects deep-rooted vegetation. Now looking at soil moisture again, this is a root zone soil moisture for the Tambo River catchment. It shows all of 2018 for the Tambo River catchment. The black line shows how the root zone soil moisture changed throughout the year. Where it's in the brown and red colours, it indicates conditions were drier than average. The white zone indicates average conditions for that time of year and blue represents wetter than normal. And you can see if you look to the end of the chart, the impact of the rainfall events in late November and mid-December were almost gone by the end of the year. Now onto the climate drivers. And as mentioned in previous updates, two important climate drivers for us are the El Nino Southern Oscillation, often called ENSO and the Indian Ocean Dipole, often called IOD. The ENSO outlook remains at El Nino Alert, suggesting a 70% chance of an El Nino forming in the coming months. The Bureau of Meteorology will update its ENSO outlook on the 8th of January. If El Nino conditions do develop, they're most likely to have a greater effect on the 2019-2020 fire season than this current season. And also, as predicted, the IOD has returned to neutral. The IOD has little effect on the Australian climate at this time of year, and we'll start watching it more closely again after summer. Now to the forecast for rainfall and temperature for the period of January to March. The season outlook produced by the Bureau of Meteorology suggests the chances of exceeding median rainfall is now less than 40% for many parts of the state, which essentially means below average rainfall is likely for the yellow and brown areas on the map at the top of the page. The bottom left map shows daily maximum temperatures are likely to be above average for the January to March period, and the bottom right map shows overnight minimum temperatures are also likely to be above average for that period, particularly in the east of the state. So in summary, last year was generally much drier than average, although most areas receive close to average rainfall in May, November and December. Areas of east Gippsland remain much drier than normal. Hotter than average conditions are likely for the next three months, and so expect rapid drying in January and February if it doesn't rain. And what does that mean for us operationally? Some considerations include the fact that the long-time soil moisture deficit remains in much of east Gippsland. So the threat of large landscape scale fires remains. If normal summer drying occurs throughout Gippsland, the landscape will become increasingly vulnerable to fire starting from dry lightning. Parts of the Upper Snowy River and Grampians currently have very low KBDI values due to recent heavy rains. However, dry open forests in those areas may dry faster and become available to burn well before KBDI and drought factor modelling suggests that they will. The flammability of open dry forests with low drought factors should be considered carefully. The low drought factor values may mean the fire danger index under-represents bushfire potential in those areas. Grassland fire behaviour is generally not affected greatly by summer rainfall. While some areas currently have some green pick emerging, that new growth is generally not enough to moderate fire behaviour, and particularly on bad days. So most of the state has enough dry dead grass to carry fire. So the grass fire threat will be predominantly determined by RH and wind speed. And that's all for this month. If you'd like to know more, get in touch or check the links below. And also please let us know what we can do to make these updates more useful for you. Thank you.