The last 12 months will be remembered, in part, for the near-relentless flooding and rain, which a finance expert has warned makes a "perfect storm" for insurance pain.
There is one silver lining on the horizon: wet weather is expected to ease in 2023 as La Niña wanes.
Steve Mickenbecker, insurance expert at financial comparison site Canstar, said insurance premiums rose drastically from September 2021 to August 2022.
He predicts further increases next year and has flagged the areas most at risk.
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Mickenbecker said premiums went up by 6.6 per cent nationally.
"But you look at Queensland up 11 per cent and Northern Territory 16.7 per cent and it's very clear this is about floods and big storms," he told 9news.com.au.
"This period proceeded some of the more recent flooding.
"You think about all those floods in western and northern NSW – the western region flooding was a bit out of the blue and a bit unexpected – so there will have to be some more increases surely."
Soaring construction costs play a part in premium prices too, Mickenbecker explained.
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"The floods, storms, potentially bushfires; they influence the number of claims insurers are likely to have," he said.
"But the other side of it is building costs will affect how much it would cost the insurer to settle the claim, and they've gone up as well.
"More claims and more expensive claims are why premiums have gone up.
"It is the perfect storm."
Mickenbecker said it's too early to forecast how much insurance premiums will rise but he did flag some of the areas most at risk.
Both western Sydney and northern Victoria make his list.
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"Unfortunately I think they'll see some rises, because the floods were so widespread," he said.
"They did (already) go up but not by as much as the north of the country, NSW went up by 4.1 per cent, and Victoria by 2.8 per cent.
"Having had the floods they had, I expect they will see a much more significant premium increase."
Mickenbecker's comments come after data, released by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) in November, showed the insurance bill for storms and floods since January 2020 has topped $12.3 billion.
The NSW and southeast Queensland floods of February and March 2022 alone accounted for $5.65 billion worth of claims.
From the 237,000 claims counted, around 68.7 per cent were closed.
The forecasted rise in premiums comes as a weather expert predicts a dramatic shift in Australia's climate.
So, what will the weather hold next year?
Weather records tumbled as Australia was hit with its third consecutive La Niña event.
The country experienced its second wettest Spring in history, with Sydney recording its soggiest year on record.
Lisa Alexander, a climate scientist with the University of NSW, told 9news.com.au above average rainfall will likely persist for the first three months of the year, with cooler temperatures felt across the east coast.
But Alexander does think clear skies are on the horizon, eventually.
"Four years of La Niña, that's not something that has really been seen," she said.
"We're probably not going to get another one in a row, but unfortunately it becomes quite tricky because there is a point at which we can't predict what is going to happen.
"It's not until we're almost at the event we can say it's going to happen."
Alexander also thinks an El Niño year is unlikely.
The weather event is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with hot weather and droughts.
"We almost certainly won't flip to one," she said.
"It is possible, but it's unusual to go from a La Niña, straight to an El Niño.
"More likely than not it will be neutral conditions".
Alexander's climate predictions are in line with the Bureau of Meterology's long range summer forecast, which flags a wetter-than-usual summer along the east coast, and drier-than-usual conditions across large parts of Western Australia.
