Severe Weather: Heavy Rain, Winds Hit NE NSW

I wanted to start off by showing you surface pressure, with red being our higher pressure and settled weather, blue being our lower pressure and nasty conditions. And I wanted to highlight one real key feature of the upcoming weather system across the east coast, and that is that during Saturday we're going to see not just one, but two distinct low pressure areas form near the east coast of the country, the first of which, down here in the south will approach the northern New South Wales coast during Saturday morning. Later in the day on Saturday, this low will continue to move southwards as it slowly weakens on Sunday. This further north low will intensify and on Sunday this will become the main weather system affecting the east coast of the country, and that will bring another round of severe weather to parts of eastern Australia.

The warnings we have issued today are focused on that first low pressure area for northern New South Wales on Saturday, because as that initial low pressure area develops, that will bring some heavy rainfall across eastern parts of the state. The most significant rain will be near and south of this low pressure center. And you can also see some really strong wind arrows whistling in from the ocean onto land. The worst conditions will be quite close to the vicinity of this low pressure area through this region here. And that is exactly where we have issued the severe weather warning for Saturday, for both heavy rainfall and damaging wind.

Let's zoom in a little bit, see a bit more detail as to where this warning is located. It covers parts of the Hunter and the mid-north coast of New South Wales, from Newcastle up to just north of Port Macquarie, that includes Taree and Foster. The region does push inland up into the hills and the Northern Tablelands. It does cover Scone, but it does not go as far north as Tamworth. Throughout this area we could see heavy rainfall and damaging wind, which could have quite an impact through the weather, especially on Saturday afternoon. We could see damage to trees and property due to that combination of strong winds and heavy rainfall. We could well see some flash flooding or some riverine flooding through that part of the country, and we may see some damage to power like power outages or potentially other infrastructure as well.

Riverine flooding does look distinctly possible, and in fact, we've already gone ahead and issued some flood watches because rivers between Newcastle and Grafton will likely see significant rises once this rain starts to sit in on Saturday. It is definitely possible that some of these rivers could burst their banks and reach their flood levels. Minor to moderate flooding is expected at the moment, but this is going to be an evolving situation. These flood watches could change or be upgraded during the coming days. So if you do live anywhere north of Sydney or south of Byron Bay, just keep an eye on what warnings are active throughout the course of the weekend.

That's the main focus for Saturday, but let's jump ahead and take a look at how things might progress into Sunday. This initial low keeps moving southwards. This one weakens away. This northern one strengthens. It becomes a really powerful low pressure area. But notice it's a little bit further away from the coastline. And what that really means is that these heaviest rainfall associated with the second low on Sunday is probably going to fall over the ocean and not over the land. However, we will still see some impacts from this one.

During Sunday, there will be some very strong winds which develop once again on Sunday and potentially we could see another damaging wind warning issued. This one could include the far north of New South Wales and may include some southern parts of Queensland as well. It's going to get very breezy around the likes of Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the sunny coast and all the way up towards K'gari here during the day on Sunday as well as those strong, powerful winds, we will be seeing some significant waves building over these eastern coastlines. Potentially hazardous or damaging surf. Those waves could be as big as six meters high, affecting parts of the northern New South Wales coast from about Port Macquarie northwards and even some large waves into the south east Queensland coastline as well.

So plenty to keep up to date with through the course of the weekend. We got warnings not just for Saturday, but probably some more warnings coming your way on Sunday. Early next week this weather system weakens away, moves away and clears up on Monday. Stay up to date with the latest on the Bureau's website and app. Thanks for watching. Have a safe weekend!