Australians are flocking back to shopping centres after the disruption of the pandemic, but will the rise of online retail make them obsolete in the years ahead?

During the past two years, COVID-19 restrictions played havoc with the successful and established business model of the shopping centre, or mall, forcing many to severely limit their trading.

In contrast, the pandemic proved a boon for online retailers, offering consumers the "convenience factor" of shopping from home or their phone and enjoying door-to-door deliveries.

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But in the lead-up to Christmas 2022-2023, Australian shoppers were returning in their thousands to brick-and-mortar shops for the first lockdown-free festive season in years.

Scentre Group, the owner of 42 Westfield shopping centres, said the growth in sales among its thousands of retail tenants was surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

But will it last? And what changes may we see in the years ahead?

The origin of shopping centres

The modern shopping mall traces its origins back to an Austrian architect Victor Gruen, who moved to the United States in 1941 and eventually began designing retail complexes for a chain of department stores.

The Southdale Centre, which opened near Minneapolis in 1956, was the world's first enclosed mall.

New suburbs were being developed across the US, and Gruen wanted to give residents a place to come together, just as people lingered in the shopping streets and plazas of his native Vienna.

One year later, Australia's first shopping centre opened at Chermside in Brisbane.

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The advent of the shopping mall was born from the consumer boom across western countries alongside big changes in society.

By the 1950s, retail sales in inner-city areas began to stall at the same time as sales in the suburbs boomed.

With public car ownership rising and more people moving to outer suburbs, the opportunity for a one-stop retail complex was ripe.

For the next 50 years, retailers tweaked the model to keep enticing customers to shopping malls.

Their appeal was anchored by discount department stores such as Target and Kmart. Food courts and, later, restaurants kept shoppers in the mall for longer.

For people who didn't want to shop, multiplex cinemas and recreational facilities such as gyms became commercial tenants in malls.

How are they changing?

While Australians appear to have returned to conventional shopping patterns, larger stores and malls can't ignore the impact of online buying, experts claimed.

Matthew Bailey, of Macquarie University in NSW, said it is being felt most strongly by department stores such as Myer and David Jones.

"When I was younger, department stores were four to five storeys high, now those stores have shrunk in size and shifted to other retailers like Rebel Sport and Toys 'R' Us," he told 2GB.

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"They were a one-stop shop, anything you needed for the house or the home, or clothing, you could purchase in this one place … there weren't many large-scale companies to compete with them."

Bailey said there appears to be a "convenience factor" for online shopping over shopping at a department store, but still believes department stores can survive in the modern era.

Customer experience is crucial

Even before the pandemic, shopping centres and department stores in Australia realised they needed to meet the challenge of online retail.

The key was offering experiences not available online such as introducing interactive changing rooms, high-end bars and even mini golf.

Many major retailers also sought to offer customers a point of difference in their outlets to challenge online competitors.

Rebel Sports launched "concept stores" in capital cities featuring immersive experiences such as virtual games, advice from athletes on the right running shoes and even the opportunity for basketball fans to shoot hoops in the store.

And confectionary giant in 2020 opened specialist KitKat chocolate stores in Melbourne and Sydney.

They offer chocolate lovers the chance to design their own KitKat based on up to 30,000 possible flavour combinations, then watch it being made.

Experts believe there will more stores like these in the future as malls continue to evolve.

"It doesn't mean it's the end of the road but they're much more specialised than they used to be and there's a lot more competition," Bailey, of Macquarie University, said.

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Sydney has been blanketed in a thick haze of fog, causing transport headaches across the city on Boxing Day.

The cloud of fog set in early this morning and briefly delayed all Sydney ferry services, however they are now back up and running.

It comes just hours before the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race kicks off.

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About 7am, Sydney Ferries confirmed all services would not be running due to the heavy fog.

An hour later, it said services had resumed but commuters would need to allow extra travel time.

Sydney is set to reach a top of 29C today, with the fog expected to clear in the coming hours.

For the latest transport information, visit www.transportnsw.info or download a transport app.

There has been a large slip on the corner of The Terrace and Buller Street.

Emergency services were called to Lake Roto Kohatu at about 6.50pm

A man has died after being pulled from the water at a popular swimming spot in NSW on Christmas Day.

Emergency services were called to Windsor Bridge at Windsor, north-west of the Sydney CBD, about 5.15pm.

NSW Police said there had been reports of a man unresponsive in the water.

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"NSW Ambulance paramedics treated a man, believed to be in his 30s; however, he died at the scene," police said.

Officers from Hawkesbury Police Area Command are investigating.

A report will be prepared for the coroner.

A man has been arrested over the shooting that killed a bikie boss's brother in Sydney in May this year.

Comancheros boss Tarek Zahed, 41, and his brother Omar, 39, were gunned down in the foyer of a gym in Auburn on May 10.

Omar died at the scene, while Tarek sustained multiple bullet wounds, including one to the head, but survived.

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Two Audi Q7 cars were found on fire at Berala and Greenacre a short time later.

Detectives yesterday arrested a 22-year-old man at Sydney Domestic terminal at about 10.30pm yesterday.

He was charged with concealing a serious indictable offence.

The man was refused bail and will appear in court today.

The investigation is continuing.

Anybody with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers or police.

A frigid winter storm killed at least 18 people as it swept across the country, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and leaving millions of people on edge about the possibility of Christmas Eve blackouts.

The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, New York, with hurricane-force winds causing whiteout conditions. Emergency response efforts were paralysed, and the city's international airport was shut down.

Across the US, officials have attributed deaths to exposure, car crashes, a falling tree limb and other effects of the storm. At least three people died in the Buffalo area, including two who suffered medical emergencies in their homes and couldn't be saved because emergency crews were unable to reach them amid historic blizzard conditions.

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Deep snow, single-digit temperatures and day-old power outages sent Buffalo residents scrambling Saturday to get out of their houses to anywhere that had heat. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the Buffalo Niagara International Airport would be closed through Monday morning and almost every fire truck in the city was stranded in the snow.

"No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot get through the conditions as we speak," Hochul said.

Blinding blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold also knocked out power in places from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern US that rolling blackouts might be required.

Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection said power plants are having difficulty operating in the frigid weather and has asked residents in 13 states to conserve electricity through at least Christmas morning. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to 10 million people in the state and parts of six surrounding ones, directed local power companies to implement planned interruptions but ended the measure by Saturday afternoon. The start of the NFL's Tennessee Titans' game in Nashville was delayed an hour by a planned power outage.

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Across the six New England states, more than 273,000 customers remained without power on Saturday, with Maine the hardest hit and some utilities saying it could be days before electricity is restored.

In North Carolina, 169,000 customers were without power as of the afternoon, down from a peak of more than 485,000, but utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for "the next few days".

Those without power included James Reynolds of Greensboro, who said his housemate, a 70-year-old with diabetes and severe arthritis, spent the morning bundled beside a kerosene heater with indoor temperatures "hovering in the 50s" (about 10C).

In the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga, two people died in their homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. He said another person died in Buffalo and said the blizzard may be "the worst storm in our community's history."

It was taking ambulances over three hours to do one trip to a hospital, Poloncarz said.

Forecasters said 71 centimetres of snow accumulated as of Saturday in Buffalo. Last month, areas just south of the city saw a record about 1.8 metres from a single storm.

The latest storm knocked out the furnace in the Buffalo home of Brian LaPrade, who woke up Saturday morning to indoor temperatures dipping below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).

"I had to go out and dig out the vents," LaPrade said. "As it was, the snow was taller than my snow blower."

Plows were on the roads, but large snow drifts, abandoned cars and downed power lines were slowing progress.

On the Ohio Turnpike, four died in a pileup involving some 50 vehicles. A Kansas City, Missouri, driver was killed Thursday after skidding into a creek, and three others died Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads.

A utility worker in Ohio was also killed Friday while trying to restore power, according to the Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative. It said the 22-year-old died in "an electrical contact incident" near Pedro in Lawrence County.

A woman in Vermont died in a hospital Friday after a tree broke in the high winds and fell on her. Police in Colorado Springs said they found the body of a person who appeared to be homeless as subzero temperatures and snow descended on the region. Near Janesville, Wisconsin, a 57-year-old woman died Friday after falling through the ice on a river, the Rock County Sheriff's Office announced.

Along Interstate 71 in Kentucky, Terry Henderson and her husband, Rick, were stuck for 34 hours in a massive traffic jam caused by several accidents. The truck drivers weathered the wait in a rig outfitted with a diesel heater, a toilet and a refrigerator but nonetheless regretted trying to drive from Alabama to their home near Akron, Ohio, for Christmas.

"We should have stayed," Terry Henderson said after they got moving again Saturday.

The storm was nearly unprecedented in its scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.

As millions of Americans were traveling ahead of Christmas, more than 2360 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled Saturday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

In Mexico, migrants camped near the US border were facing unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a US Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.

Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.

Western New York often sees dramatic lake-effect snow, which is caused by cool air picking up moisture from the warm water, then dumping it on the land. But even area residents found conditions Christmas Eve to be dire.

Latricia Stroud and her two daughters, 1 and 12, were stranded without heat or power in their Buffalo house since Friday afternoon, with the snow too deep to leave.

"I have to go over a snowbank to get out," Stroud told the AP. "There's a warming centre, I just need a ride to get there."

The trio were spotted waving from the water at about 5.40pm today.