Severe Weather Hits Southern WA: Winds, Waves

If we take a look at our latest warning, we can see that the worst of the winds has now eased through the south-west. However, damaging winds are still expected east of Albany and south of Kalgoorlie.

Now through this area, we're looking at sustained winds of 60 to 70 km/h with gusts up to 100 km/h.

We also have a Coastal Hazards Warning out about the west and south.

Now, with large and powerful waves off the west coast, we have damaging surf with the risk of coastal erosion, and we're also seeing abnormally high tides.

Over the past 24 hours, this low-pressure system has approached the south-west coast of Western Australia.

Now, this is an unusually deep low-pressure system, the likes of which we haven't seen for quite a few years.

We can see here that these pressure lines are very close together, and that indicates that there is a very tight pressure gradient.

And that is what has driven the rarely experienced, widespread, damaging to destructive winds through south-west Western Australia over the past 24 hours.

Now, those strongest gusts that we experienced were generally through the evening period.

We saw up to 135 km/h at Cape Naturaliste, 133 km/h at Cape Leeuwin, 120 km/h at Busselton.

Even for Perth, we saw 93 km/h and we've started to see some observations around 100 km/h further east around Ravensthorpe and Mount Barker as well.

However, today this low-pressure system will continue to track east, so the worst of the winds will also continue to move east into south-eastern parts of the state today, with just some lingering showers about the south-west.

If we look at our winds above the surface now, this area in red shows where we could see gusts up to 100 km/h.

But as we play through the day, we can see that that area does ease come later this evening.

Large waves also continue off the west coast, bringing that damaging surf and risk of coastal erosion.

Now, tides today are expected to be quite high up the west coast, but not quite as high as experienced yesterday.

And those abnormally high tides will also be experienced for parts of the south coast, bringing that risk of inundation to low-lying coastal areas.

We will continue to see some impacts from this severe weather today, including some trees down with possible damage to property.

We could see some more power lines down, bringing further power outages.

And those coastal conditions continue to bring the risk of coastal erosion and inundation of low-lying coastal areas.

Please keep up to date with the latest forecasts and warnings via the Bureau's website, app and social media.

Thanks for watching.