Severe Weather Alert: Multiple Hazards in Southeast

I'm Angus here at the Bureau. It is Thursday and this is a Severe Weather Update. And let's start with our observations on the rain radar.

What's been going on with the rain this morning?

Well, for south-eastern Australia we can see this big band of wet weather sweeping across New South Wales and ACT, associated with a cold front moving through the area.

There's some further showers in behind as well, affecting Tasmania and Victoria, and some very cold air moving up from the south.

But we really want you to focus in on this area here where we're seeing some strong radar echoes there in the yellows and the oranges, showing us heavier rainfall and the development of thunderstorms.

And it is those storms which could go on to affect a number of areas over the next few hours. Here is our severe thunderstorm outlook for Thursday afternoon.

And really, I want to draw your attention to the yellow and the red areas on the map, which is where severe thunderstorms are possible, including right through this area in southern and eastern New South Wales.

These severe storms could cause areas of heavy rain and flash flooding, damaging winds, and even large hailstones over the next few hours.

This looks most likely in this red region here, which includes parts of Sydney, the Illawarra and Wollongong, and that could occur right on the evening rush hour between 4 pm and 7 pm on Thursday.

This may cause delays and disruptions out and about as you go through your way this evening.

More broadly speaking, severe storms are also possible up through parts of the Hunter, into the Tablelands and even out to the North West Slopes and Plains throughout the second half of the day today.

Our focus for this afternoon will be on those severe storms, but the weather event which is driving those severe storms is going to continue into Friday.

And even though that initial band of wet weather, which we're seeing on the radar at the moment, will move offshore, we're not done with what's going on, because as that pulls away along that frontal line, this low-pressure area will develop.

And through Friday, this low-pressure area will deepen as it just hovers off the east coast of southern New South Wales.

In particular, take a look at this belt of strong winds, which is going to wrap around the low-pressure area coming up from the south. That will bring some really gusty conditions to parts of eastern Tasmania, eastern Victoria and into eastern and southern New South Wales and the ACT.

And because of that, we've gone ahead and issued some Severe Weather Warnings for the south-east of the country. These are our warning areas focused on Victoria and New South Wales, but we actually see some slightly differing details on either side of the state boundary.

So we'll start off in Victoria, where we've got the warning in place for damaging winds through eastern parts, as well as the Central Ranges north of Melbourne.

Wind gusts up to 100 km/h are expected from Friday morning through until Friday evening, but we also could see some heavy rainfall through East Gippsland, and that's included in the warning as well.

6 hour rainfall totals of 60 mm to 80 mm through eastern Victoria could lead to areas of flash flooding or may cause rivers to rise through East Gippsland.

For the New South Wales side of the border, broadly speaking, we're just looking at damaging winds being our warning criteria.

100 to 110 km/h are possible through a large area.

That's really, really strong wind, enough to bring down some trees and cause some damage to property.

The strongest gusts up towards that 110 km/h mark expected to be in the Illawarra and the south coast from Wollongong down to Eden.

Let's move on, because Friday into Saturday this low-pressure area only very slowly moves away from the country.

So we'll continue to see these very strong winds affecting eastern parts, and gradually they will peel away from mainland Australia.

But importantly, the strong winds will continue over the ocean and that will drive continued hazardous surf and large waves.

I've got the swell map here showing us the forecast swell height for southern and eastern Australia, and that is really going to crank up on Friday as this low-pressure area starts to intensify.

So big, big waves from eastern Tasmania up towards Sydney. We could see some waves in the 6m to 8m range for deeper waters offshore, maybe 4m to 5m closer into the coastline here. That is large and powerful waves. Because of that, we've issued this Coastal Hazard Warning for eastern New South Wales.

I've just put the details on here.

The warning is in place from the state border with Victoria through Merimbula all the way up to Seal Rocks, which is between Newcastle and Forster.

That does include the coastline of the Illawarra, the Sydney area and the Hunter.

And in that region we could see coastal erosion where powerful waves batter exposed southern-facing coastlines, eating away at beaches and causing damage and erosion along the shore. We could see some really large waves, both inshore and over deeper waters as well, making activities on and near the water pretty treacherous. The final thing I want to mention before I wrap up this video is the temperature.

Because as this cold front moves through, it is going to lead to some very cold conditions over the south-east.

Here we're looking at temperatures across the country just a little bit above the surface to give us an idea of what's going on. And the blues, into the greys, into the pinks are where we expect to see the coldest temperatures. This big bubble of cold air is going to move northwards in the next few days.

And look how we see cold conditions through New South Wales, Victoria, ACT, Tasmania, South Australia, even into southern Queensland.

Here's a look at Friday's maximum temperatures.

This is going to be a stark reminder that winter is ahead of us and summer is behind us.

These temperatures are looking pretty chilly, including maximums of 15°C for Hobart, 15°C for Canberra and 16°C for Melbourne.

The coldest temps of the year so far, and some places will be pushing records for the coldest temperatures ever recorded in the month of March.

So be it cold temperatures, damaging winds, large waves or severe thunderstorms, many people will be impacted by this weather event between today and Saturday.

So make sure to stay up with the latest, including all those weather warnings on the Bureau's website and the BOM Weather app. Thanks so much for watching.