Severe Weather Update: Severe Storms And Heat For East

Today's maximum temperatures. It has gotten cooler in the south for Tasmania, Victoria and southern South Australia as the heat has pushed into the north, 40 °C plus through parts of South Australia, inland New South Wales and inland Queensland. Temperatures have dropped along the east coast. It was an extremely hot day in Sydney yesterday on Friday, with parts of the city over 40 °C. That's back to the low 30s.

Heatwaves aren't just about the daytime high temperatures, though. The overnight low temperatures are also significantly above average, with minimums through the night tonight in the 20s across New South Wales, Queensland and northern South Australia, some places 25 °C or higher, all through the night tonight before another hot day on Sunday. Again, we see these 40 °C temperatures inland, high 30s across parts of the east coast, including around Newcastle and Grafton, not too far away from 40 °C at all.

And then we're actually forecasting an even hotter night on Sunday night into Monday morning, with the potential for some temperatures to get quite close to records here for the overnight low temperature. Let's take Sydney and Newcastle, for example. 24, 25 °C as the absolute minimum through the night there. But that's going to be about 6 a.m. when we finally drop to that temperature. You imagine 10, 11:00 at night, you're trying to get to sleep, it's probably more like 28 or 29 °C, making for some very uncomfortable sleeping conditions through the current heatwave.

And we have still got heatwave warnings in place for parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland. The main area is shown here in orange, where we have severe heatwaves from northern Sydney up through the north of the state, with potential for extreme heatwave in this darker shading through parts of the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers region. And we also have some severe heatwaves in orange across southern parts of Queensland, mostly over the Darling Downs, Granite Belt and inland parts of the south-east. So it will be very hot over the next few days, obviously through this area here.

But it's not just the heat that we're worried about in this video. We have got the potential for some significant stormy weather as well over the course of a couple of days. Now we're showing here the synoptic map for Saturday, for today, and we're going to see some fairly spotty shower and storm activity building through this area here, sort of cutting a path across New South Wales, starting in the north-west, moving down to the south-east, including across the Canberra region and into parts of northern Victoria as well.

And that is where we see our biggest threat for severe thunderstorms for today, later on today after lunch on Saturday. This yellow area is where we could see severe storms, and thunderstorms are classified as severe thunderstorms when they bring any of the following things. Damaging wind gusts, heavy rain that can lead to flooding, or large hailstones. And for today, we actually see the risk of any or all of those with the thunderstorms through this region.

So as we saw, it's kind of spotty, hit and miss, and it will not collect everyone today. But we have got that risk across this area here, north-east Victoria, southern and central parts of the New South Wales coast from Sydney down to Bega, as well as through most of Canberra, the Riverina and out into parts of the lower west. There is a secondary area for severe thunderstorms across the north-eastern parts of the state, from Port Macquarie up to Byron Bay, mostly over inland parts and up into the Northern Tablelands as well. We could see severe thunderstorms in that smaller region this afternoon.

Now I'm going back to the map because we see something quite different move through on Sunday. This is now tomorrow's map, and it's no longer the spotty hit-and-miss rainfall. We see this big swathe with a crossover with a developing low pressure area. So on Sunday, I expect the rain to be much more widespread, hitting large parts of southern and south-eastern Australia, most of Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, all in line for a spell of rainfall during the day on Sunday.

And as this weather feature glides by, it's also going to kick up some severe thunderstorms. So the map looks a little scary for the day on Sunday. We've got a more widespread risk of severe thunderstorms, and we've also got this red area introduced onto the map, where severe thunderstorms are now looking likely to occur during the day on Sunday.

So we'll zoom in a little bit, take a slightly closer look at where that red region is. That is out to the west of Canberra. So Canberra's in the yellow area where severe thunderstorms could occur. The likely region for severe thunderstorms is west of Canberra, into the Riverina north-eastern parts of Victoria, and out into the far west of New South Wales as well, potentially from Griffith up to Broken Hill. Again, severe thunderstorms occurring on Sunday could bring any of the following: damaging winds, heavy rainfall and large hail, and could really play a significant role in the weather over this part of the country.

Finally, we will go ahead to Monday as well, because we'll see everything shifting up to the north a little bit. So these areas which are getting lots of stormy weather this weekend are calmer, settled and more sunny during Monday. But we'll see this band of wet and potentially stormy weather push northwards, and the associated risks also pushing northwards. Now north of Sydney, from about Newcastle up to the Mid North Coast, and then inland out to central parts of Queensland.

So just to summarise some of that with the key impacts, severe thunderstorms over the course of the weekend could bring some strong winds which may bring down trees and cause power outages, could bring some large hail which can damage cars, damage houses and windows, and potentially damage crops, and could bring some heavy rainfall, especially on Sunday, which may lead to flash flooding, and the potential is there for some river level rises as well. Alongside that, we have got the heatwave warning in place across New South Wales and Queensland. Several hot days in a row, difficult sleeping conditions, and the potential for heat stress to affect people.

That is all I've got for today, but there is plenty going on, so you may want an update through the course of the weekend, and you can always find the latest weather information on the BOM website or BOM Weather app. Thanks for watching.