Severe Storms to Hit NSW, SE Qld

Firstly, let's take a look at today's storm map, today we're likely to see severe thunderstorms possible across much of this yellow highlighted area.

Of particular concern though, where we might see some of those stronger storms are in this red highlighted area between around Cobar and Tamworth.

And these storms today could bring damaging winds. And that's the main risk for a lot of New South Wales today, ahead of that cold front moving through Victoria, as I'll show you shortly.

Thunderstorms today could bring damaging winds and also with this hot, dry and windy conditions, dry lightning is also at risk with some of our storms through New South Wales and that could ignite more fires across the state, where there's already a number of fires ongoing through the Hunter and the Mid North coast, so make sure we need to watch out for that.

So let's look at today's storm risk in more detail. Firstly, the main driver is this cold front moving through Victoria and southern New South Wales today.

That's bringing a band of rain and thunderstorms down there, while further north it's this trough line that's going to be the main focus of our thunderstorm activity today through New South Wales.

And as we get into the late afternoon and evening hours, you'll see those storms starting to pop up right across New South Wales. And some of them could be dry, bringing dry lightning, which could ignite fires.

And we're likely to see damaging winds for a number of these storms as well. And then some of them will be moving towards our coastal parts of New South Wales as we move into the evening hours.

But of concern is tomorrow. So as we move into tomorrow, this trough line is going to move into an area of more moisture through north-east New South Wales and inland south-east Queensland.

And while it's only yellow on the map now, we're likely to see this move into red as we get a better handle of what the atmosphere will look like tomorrow.

And we're likely to see severe thunderstorms over a large part of north-east New South Wales and inland south-east Queensland as well.

Not only are we likely to see large hail, damaging winds and heavy rainfall, we could also see destructive winds and giant hail with some of our most intense thunderstorms tomorrow, particularly in north-east New South Wales and possibly into the southern Darling Downs.

And I'll show you why that is. So as we move into tomorrow, we're going to see this surface trough continue moving northwards and eastwards during the day.

But we have another trigger moving up the coast and that's a strong cooler south to south-easterly wind change.

So we're going to have this inland trough moving towards north-east New South Wales. And this strong southerly change moving up the coast and combined that's going to cause an atmosphere ripe for dangerous thunderstorms to develop during the afternoon and evening.

So as by early afternoon the storms will be popping off around the Hunter Mid North coast and up towards Tamworth and even up towards the Roma area.

Then as we move into the mid and late afternoon, you can see widespread thunderstorms developing over a huge part of north-east New South Wales and south-east Queensland.

And some of these storms are likely to be severe with large hail, damaging winds and heavy rainfall.

Then, as we move into the overnight hours, those storms will move further north into far south-east Queensland, impacting places like the Gold Coast, Brisbane and maybe even the Sunshine Coast during the early hours of Monday morning before it all clears off the coast as the sun comes up on Monday.

So what's that going to cause. Well, today the main risk will be damaging winds through parts of New South Wales, we could see winds strong enough to bring damage to homes, properties and businesses and cause power outages, and also cause erratic and dangerous fire conditions, if these storms move over the ongoing fires in the Hunter and the Mid North coast.

But tomorrow is the main concern where some of our storms could bring large to giant hail, enough to damage homes, properties, businesses as well as cars.

We could see widespread tree damage where these storms do impact, and that is winds also strong enough to bring damage to homes, properties and businesses.

And then into the evening and overnight hours, some locations could see heavy rainfall, heavy enough to lead to localized flash flooding, and that could inundate homes, properties, businesses and flood roads, but that be in a much more localised and isolated nature.

So with severe thunderstorms in New South Wales today and north-east New South Wales and south-east Queensland tomorrow, make sure to get the latest forecasts and warnings by our website and app.

You can always track the storms on radar and get the latest emergency services info from your local emergency services.