A 7NEWS meteorologist has issued an unusually blunt warning ahead of the coming Australian summer, saying he has never "seen so many reports of 10cm hail in all of my career in forecasting," a claim that lands alongside confirmed Bureau of Meteorology records showing 2026 was Australia's equal third-hottest winter on record, with NSW, Victoria and Tasmania each recording their warmest winter ever.

Tony Auden told Sunrise that bushfire conditions are already worsening across NSW and Queensland, with the threat expected to persist for two to three months before shifting south to Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia from around Christmas. He also warned that dry air combined with building storm activity could produce unusually dangerous supercell thunderstorms as the season progresses.

This kind of early seasonal warning has already been borne out once this year. BOM's Spring 2026 forecast flagged above-average bushfire risk for northeastern Tasmania weeks before fires broke out there in August, part of a financial year in which the Insurance Council of Australia recorded $3.98 billion in insured losses across seven declared catastrophe events, up from roughly $2.2 billion across three events the year before.

Storm and hail remain Australia's largest source of insured natural hazard losses, and Auden's specific warning about hail reports fits that pattern directly, even before accounting for the 11 tropical cyclones BOM recorded in the 2025-26 financial year, slightly above the long-term average of 10.

The geographic sequence Auden laid out gives brokers a rough timeline to work against: bushfire risk building now across NSW and Queensland's north, shifting to southern NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia from around Christmas, while northern Australia faces rising thunderstorm and tropical system risk as the wet season develops.

For brokers with property, motor or rural clients in any of these zones, the specific, unusual nature of this warning, not just another hot summer, but a forecaster's own career-high hail activity and a track record of this season's early alerts already proving accurate, is worth treating as a genuine prompt for sums insured and preparedness conversations now, rather than once the season peaks.