Dry summers may be the norm down south at this time of year, but in Brisbane residents are asking: where is our rain?

Over the past few weeks we have seen record breaking heat and extreme fire danger in the south, the much anticipated monsoon has broken and cyclones have circled, but in the background Brisbane has been quietly drying out.

No drought has been declared and the dams are still at 73.4 per cent but south-east Queensland's usually wet summer has yet to eventuate for the state's capital.

David Crock, at the Bureau of Meteorology's Brisbane office, said January so far was well below average, with only 26.4 millimetres of the 154 mm average hitting the main city gauge in Kangaroo Point so far.

"If we look around south-east Queensland more widely, there's a lot of stations, Sunshine Coast Airport is one, out towards Gatton as well and the Gold Coast," Mr Crock said.

"A lot of stations have had zero, one, two, three millimetres for the whole month.

"A lot of places around the south-east are on track for their driest Januarys on record."

He said that anywhere south of Rockhampton had been "really, really dry" this month.

December was "a bit of a mixed bag" but generally it was around average, according to Mr Crock.

"A little bit above average for some stations and a lot of that depended on if you've got a really good rainfall out of a particular storm, those totals can be quite localized," said Mr Crock.

Why so dry?

According to Mr Crock, we have had a stable, static weather pattern for a while, with a big ridge of high pressure sitting over eastern Australia.

"What that does is prevent any real significant rain events from developing, or any widespread storms from coming through from inland like we saw a bit of in December," he said.

The grass is looking brown across Brisbane as the rain holds off. ( ABC Weather Kate Doyle )

"It just makes for really warm, dry and stable weather like we've seen for the past few weeks," Mr Crock said.

"There haven't really been any weather events that have broken that stable pattern.

"So, just the high pressure dominating our weather for pretty much the whole of the month of January."

What is it usually like?

Brisbane's summer rainfall is quite variable. This is not the first January without much rain.

Mr Crock said the peak of the thunderstorm season around Brisbane was normally in November and December.

"Which is when all the conditions in the atmosphere line up best for those really severe thunderstorms that we know affect Brisbane in spring and summer."

He said later in summer they could happen, but it was less common for everything to line up just right for them.

"We often see really big widespread rain events that are more tropical rain events coming down from the north around this time of year," Mr Crock said.

James Feez isn't worried about the lack of rain just yet. ( Supplied: James Feez )

Tropical depressions and tropical lows moving south caused bad floods in previous years, according to Mr Crock.

"But it's been all high pressure and calm weather for about a month now. So we haven't seen anything like that. Hopefully we'll get something along those lines in the next month or two."

Not worried yet

James Feez said business had been steady at the garden centre he manages in the north of Brisbane.

Mr Feez said that the summer weather was always extreme one way or another.

"Before my time, this business went through the 2011 floods. From there summer rain has been pretty steady.

"Any amount of rain held by the pot gets pretty much taken up straight away.

But while he is not too concerned at this stage, there will be problems if it doesn't rain soon.

"If we don't get that potential summer rain filling up dams on the wholesale perspective, that can cause us a few problems and leaves a peppering of doubt among our customers." Mr Feez said

"But luckily for us we are surrounded by some very passionate, very enthusiastic gardeners, so I'm not too worried about the next couple of weeks."

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"Unfortunately for the south-east, there's not too much on the short-term outlook in terms of the next seven days." Mr Crock said.

"There should be a lot of rain in northern Queensland over the coming week, but not too much for the south-east.

"Perhaps some onshore showers towards the middle and end of next week. But nothing too significant on the seven day forecast unfortunately. "