Damaging Winds, High Tides Hit Southeast

And that is the focus of this severe weather video. I'm Angus, I'm here at the Bureau. Today is Monday the 13th of July. Let's dive right into it. What is happening?

Well, a cold front has moved across Tasmania this morning, and behind that cold front we see this burst of really strong westerly winds moving from down here through the Bass Strait, funneling some really damaging wind gusts around parts of northern Tasmania.

And that's a little bit easier to see if we just change the map so we're looking at the wind. Focus on the reds, focus on the purples. That's the strongest wind flow here. See how it really funnels through the strait?

That means it's really gusty around northern Tasmania, parts of the islands in Bass Strait as well. It's a little tougher to see on this map, but also getting very windy around the alpine areas in northern Victoria and southern New South Wales.

Tonight as this cold front moves away notice how we drop back to greens and yellows. That means the wind is easing tonight.

Another little pulse of strong wind waiting in the wings for tomorrow, although that one is unlikely to be quite as windy as today.

So what warnings have we managed to squeeze out of this strong wind event? Well, there's quite a few of them.

Small areas, but numerous areas now in northern Tasmania, the north-east, the north-west and the islands here in the Bass Strait. It's really powerful westerlies throughout the course of today.

100 km/h wind gusts, maybe stronger in a few spots, that will peak this afternoon before easing off this evening.

A little further northwards, across alpine Victoria and the Snowy Mountains, those winds could continue into this evening and tomorrow morning, probably easing before sunrise on Tuesday.

The winds up here could be 110 km/h, and there has been quite a bit of snow recently. That means that snow could get blown around and whipped up, and lead to very low visibility and blizzard-like conditions.

Alongside these wind warnings, we have a separate set of warnings. These are not for wind.

These are for abnormally high tides around the high tide time this evening, Monday evening.

So for an example, the Lakes Entrance high tide is around about 7:10 p.m. this evening. That time will vary a little bit depending on where you live on the coast, but generally it is going to be between 6 and 8 p.m. this evening where we could see really high tides, the water sitting well above the usual high tide mark, potentially leading to inundation.

The warning extends from the southern tip of the Mornington Peninsula, down past Wilsons Prom and out towards Orbost. So it covers the majority of the Gippsland coast.

And we have a similar high tide warning for south-eastern Tasmania in and around the Hobart area. This one extends from Orford down to Dover.

The high tide here is a little bit earlier in the evening, approximately 6:30 p.m. around Hobart, and similar for most surrounding areas.

Now to summarise some of the impacts that we expect to see from this severe weather over the next 12 to 18 hours, of course, we could see wind damage.

That means trees down and potential damage to property, maybe some power outages, but we could also see seawater inundation.

That means flooding at the coastline, as that seawater rises onshore into places that it can't normally reach.

That can mean flooding for walkways, car parks, some roads, and potentially some property as well.

And of course, both of those can lead to travel delays and travel disruption.

So there's a really good reason to keep an eye on your weather forecast and your weather warnings if you live in south-eastern Australia for today.

You can always get the latest updates on the bureau's website and the BOM Weather app. Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.