We've seen a bit of thunderstorm activity over the past 10 days in the North East, which is not unusual for November.

A freak thunderstorm on Saturday, 22 November brought 64.8mms to Rutherglen by Sunday morning and 68.8mms to Falls Creek, which were the heaviest daily falls since November 1998.

Little or no rain occurred at Wangaratta and other nearby centres which is quite a contrast to the widespread heavy rain event which happened in November 1998.

Barometric pressures are still abnormally low - the lowest in November in Victoria since 1952- which does indicate there will be continued unsettled conditions with more thunderstorms.

Further north and tropical cyclone Fina formed near Darwin late on 21 November and produced 168.6mms rainfall by Saturday morning, which was Darwin's wettest November day in 146 years of records.

The previous wettest November day was 145.3mms in 1885.

Darwin was already saturated by 246mms of rainfall up to mid month and up until 26 November it has had 446mms, surpassing the previous wettest November of 399mms in 1938.

Tropical cyclones occurring in November are rare occurrences.

The last one was 20 years ago in 2005 and that set up a very hot summer in Victoria and NSW with maximum temperatures topping 43 degrees at many places including North East Victoria, with this extreme heat continuing into early March 2006.

Other years when tropical cyclones occurred in November were in 1973 and 1910 and we had excessive rainfalls right up to April.

Tropical cyclones do often set up very high temperatures across the central part of the nation.

Birdsville recorded 47 degrees last Monday, 24 November, the third highest behind 48.7 degrees in November 1990 and 48.5 degrees in November 2006.

The 1990 event led to a very hot December, the hottest December for 33 years and then welcome heavy rain arrived in January 1991.