Damaging Winds Hit Southwest WA Tonight

But as we start to play through the map across Wednesday afternoon, we will see this cold front rapidly approaching the country, and it's bringing some rain with it. It will be a narrow band of rain by the time it arrives, but the rain could be embedded with a few thunderstorms. So later on today, when this front reaches the west coast around about 7:00 local time, we'll see the rain kick off across the west, including for Perth, and that could mean a thunderstorm arrives.

Then through the evening, once this front arrives, very strong, gusty winds are expected across the west and south-west of the state. Here's a look at the wind this evening. We see those strong winds shown by reds and purples on the map, extending from north of Perth, down across the south-western corner, down to the Albany coastline and even across to Esperance. It is this corner of the country where we anticipate those strongest winds, and the very strongest gusts will probably come through when that front arrives between 7:00 and perhaps 11:00 this evening.

As it pushes through, we will then see the winds start to clear on the reverse side of this front, on the western side, so the wind will ease off in Perth and Bunbury in the last couple of hours of the day, probably shortly before midnight. The warning has been issued already this morning. It extends from just north of Perth down to around Walpole, not all the way to Albany. This is where we expect the strongest wind gusts. 90 to 100km an hour gusts are possible through late this afternoon and into this evening.

The strongest winds, right as that frontal system arrives, could come hand-in-hand with those showers and thunderstorms as well, so it could become a very active and disturbed spell of weather through the second half of your day today. Might be hard to believe if you're looking out the window at the moment and seeing only sunny skies, but that front is going to move in very, very swiftly, tonight.

We should see those strongest winds ease off by around about midnight and pushing into tomorrow the winds will be just a touch lighter. However, through this evening we could see some of these severe weather impacts as those winds do ramp up, in particular, damage to trees and branches that could fall down onto property, onto vehicles, things like that. Maybe a bit of damage to crops and other agricultural regions is possible. And we will certainly be seeing some very large waves across the coastline getting whipped up and driven ashore by these powerful winds.

Let's check out how the system is going to move into tomorrow, because the severe weather risk around this coastline does decrease tomorrow, but we'll still see a good band of showers and possible storms across the south of Western Australia. In particular, we could see some rain, some thunderstorms and some strong winds along this stretch of coastline here across southern parts of the state.

By Thursday evening, moving into the last few hours of the day, we're really looking at the effects of this weather system leaving Western Australia, but they will continue to impact other parts of the country as they'll move through South Australia overnight into Friday morning with a band of strong winds and rainfall, and then during the day on Friday into parts of Victoria and Tasmania.

Now this carries a couple of risks of severe weather. We could potentially see some more strong or damaging wind gusts across alpine parts of the south-east. That means the Tasmanian mountains, the Victorian mountains and maybe the mountains in southern New South Wales. So potentially we could see some severe weather warnings get issued for that area, and those warnings would probably be issued tomorrow on Thursday.

One other thing that will happen with this front, when it reaches the south-east, is a pool of very cold air shown by whites and pinks on this map will move across south-eastern parts. Temperatures will drop away across the south-east as we move into the weekend, and we could well see some low level snow, fall across south-eastern parts of the country during the weekend as well.

So this weather system will bring the chance of severe weather to both the west coast and the east coast of the country in the coming few days. So no matter where you are, do stay up to date with your latest forecast and your latest severe weather information available on the Bureau's website and app.

Thanks for watching.