Severe Storms, Floods, Winds Hit Southern Australia

I'm Angus. I'm here at the Bureau of Meteorology. This is a Severe Weather Update for the 1st of July.

Let's start off with some observations of the rain radar. This is what has already happened, and the main talking point this morning has been thunderstorms moving through South Australia. Some really active stormy weather across Adelaide on Wednesday morning. We've also seen storms pushing up through the Mid North and Flinders area. At times we've seen thunderstorms over the North East Pastoral Districts, up through here and through western New South Wales. They were severe earlier this morning.

That activity has bubbled down for the time being, but severe storms absolutely could continue to occur today, as we'll see on the forecast for the rest of Wednesday.

A band of wet and stormy weather races eastwards. That's going to bring some pretty active conditions through interior parts of New South Wales, much of Victoria, southern inland Queensland, as well as the northern parts of Tasmania.

As this band does sweep eastwards today, the main threat is going to be the potential for severe thunderstorms. This is our thunderstorm forecast for today. We see this big area over some southern parts where storms could occur. In particular, it's the yellow and the red regions, which we'll zoom in on now, showing us where severe thunderstorms may occur today.

Severe thunderstorms are those ones that really pack a punch. They bring an array of weather hazards, including some heavy rainfall that could lead to flash flooding, large hailstones - we don't often see that in this part of the country during this time of year, but it certainly could happen with today's weather system - and damaging or even destructive wind gusts. We're talking 100, 120, 130 km/h. Winds of that speed can bring down really big branches, if not entire trees, as well as cause damage to houses and power lines.

In terms of timing, we're going to see this band of storms sweep from here out this way. So if you live near the tri-state border, somewhere around Broken Hill, Mildura or the Murraylands, Riverland or North East Pastoral District in South Australia, your storms are most likely to occur really in the next few hours, the early part of the afternoon. If you live a bit further to the east, out towards Echuca, Albury-Wodonga, Wagga Wagga or Griffith, it's looking a little later in the afternoon, pushing towards the early evening, when your storm activity is most likely.

Given we anticipate a band of storms to sweep across this part of the country, it's likely only to be stormy in each location for perhaps an hour as the worst of the activity pushes overhead, and then things will clear up as the storms move to the next town down the road.

Alongside stormy conditions today, there's also a threat of damaging wind gusts in the mountains. This warning here shows us where we could see those strongest gusts, potentially up to 90 km/h all day, peaking over 120 km/h through some times this afternoon.

So those are our main focus points for Wednesday, but this weather system is going to stick around into Thursday as well, or kind of one of two weather systems. So this is our band of storms, but overnight tonight it weakens, then early Thursday morning it moves off the east coast, bringing just a little bit of rainfall to coastal parts like Sydney.

That's quickly followed up by another cold front from the south. A bit of a different flavour to this one. We don't see the same risk of thunderstorms with tomorrow's cold front. Instead, we get a colder, more wintry blast of weather moving in from the Southern Ocean, so expect temperatures to drop. Showers and hail are possible with the cold weather, some really strong winds, and if you're living up in alpine areas, some snow on the mountains.

As this next weather system moves through on Thursday, it will bring another burst of these damaging wind gusts to parts of South Australia. So we've got this warning in place for tomorrow. The strongest winds really starting overnight tonight though, potentially about midnight and going through until late Thursday morning. It includes the tips of the South Australian peninsulas, King Island and the south-east coast, where we could see winds over 90 km/h.

We're not quite done with this yet though. Friday now sees the second frontal band move across the south-east and out into the Tasman Sea. Another quite wintry day for Tasmania and Victoria in particular. Frequent showers, cold winds, maybe a little bit more hail in a few spots. But it will be easing, especially across Victoria during Friday, and we're heading into an overall drier weekend.

But before that weekend arrives, quite a bit of rainfall with these two weather systems back to back. Still seeing some pretty sizeable totals building up across south-eastern parts of the country. Really, this is the main area where we could see some significant rain.

So let's zoom in and take a slightly closer look. Certainly another 50 mm to 100 mm on top of the rain we've already had this week through parts of northern Victoria, southern New South Wales and the northern coast and northern slopes of Tasmania. Now that could contribute to rivers which are already starting to swell based on the rain that's already fallen.

And here's what we're looking at for our Flood Warnings and Watches across Victoria and Tasmania. There is one Moderate Flood Warning out at the moment for the Ovens and King rivers in Victoria. There are a number of Minor Flood Warnings shown here in green across northern and central Victoria, as well as northern and north-eastern Tasmania. All the other rivers highlighted on the map here in purple are under Flood Watch. That means that we could see flooding there based on the rainfall forecast in the coming few days.

So if you live on or near any of these waterways in northern Victoria or Tasmania, definitely over the next few days keep up to date with these Watches and Warnings and check in on the status of your local river.

So we do have a fine weekend for most, but plenty of weather to get through before that arrives. So this week stay up to date with warnings, watches and the rain radar, all available on the Bureau website and the BOM Weather app.

Thank you so much for watching, and stay safe.