Severe Weather Update: Damaging Winds For South-east

So we'll start off by looking at the satellite imagery for the last few hours, and here we can see this cold front that crossed Tasmania earlier today and is brushing past southern parts of Victoria. Now this cold front is expected to quickly clear out into the Tasman Sea. And it's this system here, much stronger, bringing these strong and gusty north-westerly winds ahead of it, enhancing shower activity with this vigorous westerly wind behind it and much colder air mass.

Now, we have issued a number of Severe Weather Warnings for damaging wind gusts, including across all of Tasmania, generally on and south of the ranges for Victoria, but excluding Melbourne, for the lower south-east of South Australia and the southern ranges of New South Wales. Now, anywhere within these areas, damaging wind gusts are expected to start to develop in the early hours of tomorrow morning. And for Tasmania, that means wind gusts in excess of 100 km/h, whereas for the mainland that's in excess of 90 km/h.

Now I'm just going to show you the winds 1.5 km above sea level. So these are the winds you expect to see about alpine areas, but also the winds that can be brought down to the surface in thunderstorms and be experienced as gusts with those thunderstorms. And they really highlight well when the winds are expected to really start to increase. So here we're looking at the early hours of Friday morning and you can see the wind strengthening through that warning area, but, in particular, I just want to focus on this darker purple area down here. Now this is where we can have winds of 130 km/h or even stronger.

Now that's relevant because when we look at the thunderstorm outlook, severe thunderstorms with destructive gusts, possible throughout this yellow area here. So that's in excess of 125 km/h. So winds of this strength have the potential to bring down trees and cause damage to property, create hazardous driving conditions in the crosswind or produce debris across the roads, and also potentially bring down powerlines or cause power outages. So it might be a good idea to secure any loose items on your property and also take caution if you are driving.

So, taking a look at those winds just to see when we're expecting them to ease across the mainland, we're expecting them to ease below threshold during Friday evening, a little slower to ease throughout Tasmania during Saturday morning. So those wind warnings are expected to be canceled at those times.

So how much rainfall are we expecting? Well, this is the accumulated rainfall between now and Sunday evening where the heaviest rainfall is expected about the western parts of Tasmania. Now it's been a really wet few weeks for Tasmania, with these cold fronts sweeping across and grounds are very wet, soils are sodden and river systems will respond very quickly to any further rainfall. In fact, we do have a number of minor flood warnings already in place for the Meander, for the North Esk and also for the Derwent.

Now, this is an evolving weather situation, so we also have flood watches in place for large parts of Tasmania with this increasing rainfall expected. So if you or anyone you know lives across south-eastern parts of the country, now's the time to stay up to date with our latest forecast and warnings via the Bureau website, app and social media. And, as always, listen to the advice from your local emergency services.

Bye for now.