The Australian Annual Climate Statement for 2019 will be issued in early January.
Climate summaries for each state and capital city will be published at the same time.
While the BoM is still crunching the numbers, it's likely to be one of Australia's warmest and driest years on record.
Daytime temperatures in 2019 were especially warm, in the warmest 10 per cent of years on record or most of Victoria.
It is likely to be one of the 10 warmest years on record for Victoria as a whole.
January was an exceptional month, with significant heatwaves contributing to Australia's warmest summer on record.
Thirty weather stations across Victoria had their highest January temperature on record on the 25th.
The mean maximum temperature for January 2019 was more than 5 degrees warmer than usual for northern Victoria.
Rainfall for 2019 was below average for most of the state, and very much below average in the north and Gippsland.
Parts of the south and south-west had close to normal annual rainfall thanks to a wet May and June.
Persistent warmth during 2019 was driven by the combination of the long-term warming trend and natural climate drivers, including a long-lived positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).
The overall sea surface temperatures pattern in the Indian Ocean was generally consistent with a positive IOD from late May, and firmly in positive territory from August, contributing to the very low rainfall across Australia.
A positive IOD often results in below average winter-spring rainfall over southern and central Australia, and typically warmer than average winter-spring days for the southern two-thirds of Australia.
Sudden stratospheric warming also played a role in spring, when the stratosphere high above the South Pole began rapidly heating at the end of August.
This shifted the belt of westerly winds over the Southern Ocean towards the equator, resulting in warmer than average spring temperatures and below average rainfall across large parts of eastern Australia.
Low rainfall also contributed to higher daytime temperatures over Australia during 2019, as dry soils reduce evaporation from the landscape, which would otherwise exert a cooling influence.
Those same dry soils contributed to the relatively low night-time temperatures seen in winter across much of inland Australia, including north-east Victoria.