Severe Weather: Rain, Storm Threat Across Australia

As the sun rose across Australia this morning, we could see a nice cloud band building through central areas, mostly across South Australia, but also leaning up into southern parts of the Territory and buried in this cloud band there's been a mix of showers and thunderstorms both last night and through the morning this morning. In fact, just in the last couple of hours, we have seen some of the stormy weather building over southern parts of South Australia. A couple of good thunderstorms rumbling across the Eyre Peninsula, now making their way down towards Adelaide. We've had a couple of rumbles of thunder around Adelaide and certainly could see more over the next few hours.

But for the time being, if we look at the rainfall signal here, we can see it's pretty patchy and fractured and broken apart, and that's really the name of the game for today as the rain is going to be sparse and broken and scattered. However, as we look at the next few days, we will see this band of rain coalesce and strengthen into a much more cohesive band of wet weather.

So the rain is being driven by this cold front here, this blue line with the little triangles along it. And the reason that we are going to see this cold front become stronger and deliver a more potent band of rain is because it is going to get a much stronger connection with the tropics. And that means that humid air from up here is going to get sucked down and feed the development of rain across southern and eastern parts.

And one way we can see this is through how extensive this rain band becomes. Already by the end of the day today, we'll see this rain band, well it's off the bottom of the screen here, south of Tasmania, stretching all the way up through western Vic and New South Wales into central parts of the Territory. And actually, as we progress into Monday, we'll see that connection grow even stronger and the rain band will stretch even further north, all the way up to the Gulf here, potentially the Top End as well.

We see this band is going to sweep right across the eastern half of the country during Sunday night, Monday into Tuesday as well. So we've got widespread rain in the forecast across eastern states for the first few days of next week. And with this band of rain fuelled by that tropical moisture moving eastwards, it could bring a risk of storms to many areas.

And we'll actually see our thunderstorm map is painted broadly across the country. This is Monday's thunderstorm outlook, and the coloured areas show where thunderstorms could occur. And we can just see what massive areas that does include, all the way across the tropical north, down through central areas to parts of the south. Now, the yellow parts of this map are where we may see severe thunderstorms tomorrow.

Now, these are more isolated areas, including inland parts of southern and central Queensland, inland parts of northern New South Wales, and this area here, which does go out towards coastal areas and southern New South Wales, from around about the Central Coast, through Sydney and the Illawarra, and down towards the state border with Victoria. So, some thunderstorms could tend severe tomorrow.

That will be a major watch point as this broad band of wet weather does sweep eastwards. Now, let's progress forward one further day into Tuesday. And Tuesday is actually the day where this band will cross the Queensland coast. So if you are in coastal Queensland or the coast of northern New South Wales, Tuesday is your day to see some of this rainfall.

Then it will pull out towards the east into the Tasman Sea and away from the country. However, following that, there's still going to be this cold wind flow down here in the south across Victoria and Tasmania that will be bringing showers to pepper the southern states after the band of rain on Monday. Showers on Tuesday and that's actually quite significant for Victoria, especially because Tuesday is a public holiday down there.

It is Cup Day in Victoria. That means the Melbourne Cup will be run and that could be interrupted by a shower or some cold winds on Tuesday as well. One other way we can see the extent of the impact of this rain is looking at the total rainfall between Sunday and Tuesday, the next few days all on one map, and just seeing how far it stretches across the country.

Now, I do want to stress, for most areas this is not going to be a particularly impressive amount of rain. It's not going to cause many issues or impacts. The main idea is that it is going to be extensive and hit large parts of the country, including a lot of central areas which typically run very dry. However, we could see some slightly more notable rainfall figures in the south here, through central and eastern parts of Victoria, as well as southern parts of Tasmania.

We could get some slightly higher falls, 30 mm to 50 mm of rain in these areas definitely possible. Wouldn't rule out a couple of spots getting slightly more than that as well. And that does include both Melbourne and Hobart as areas that could see some pretty sizeable rainfall totals over the next 48 to 72 hours. Finally, there is one extra element to this I have barely even mentioned yet, but I think it does warrant a mention.

And that is the temperature change which is coming with this cold front. So, this is Sunday around the middle of the day, about the time that I'm filming this video, and to the east of this cold front, lots of warm air across eastern parts of the country. Quite a hot day through some central parts of Queensland, relatively mild across the south-east.

It's forecast to be 31 °C in Melbourne today, quite a long way above average there. Meanwhile, on this side of the cold front, much, much colder air moving onto South Australia today. It's already dropped 10 °C in Adelaide since earlier this morning. And as we continue to play this map, we'll see the cold air here smears across eastern parts of the country.

So alongside a rain band, we're also anticipating a big drop in temperature through the first few days of next week. Could be as much as 10 °C below average through parts of South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania for the next couple of days. So, wet, stormy, chilly weather on the way for many areas. Definitely a good week to stay up to date with your weather forecast, and you can do that through the Bureau's website and app.

Thanks for watching.