The Aussie fires have been headlining the news here all through the holidays. Sad situation!
Our weather is unremarkable by comparison, except that we got all of December's snow between Christmas Eve and New Years Day. One more blast of snow tomorrow night to cover the entire holiday season.
The trend this past fall has been similar to the year before - storms with high winds coming in from the south instead of north, so rain instead of snow. Outlook is to have more of those during the winter except snow turning to rain or vise versa.
I had to get some large trees cut that were south of my house and had become really menacing with stronger wind storms coming from the south. Have not regretted that decision, as storm after storm followed the pattern.