Severe Weather Update: Severe Thunderstorms This Afternoon In NSW

The stormy weather is being driven by a cold front, which is going to move northwards across the east coast of New South Wales. So far this morning, this front hasn't brought much in the way of stormy weather, just a couple of rumbles up in these southern ranges. But as we get through the afternoon after lunch, we see much more widespread shower and thunderstorm activity form over a large part of the east and north of the state. Some of these storms could tend severe as well.

So without further ado, I'm going straight into the thunderstorm outlook map for the day today. This shows us where thunderstorms could occur on Friday, and it clearly covers a massive part of the country, almost the entirety of central and eastern New South Wales. But what I really want to draw your attention to is the yellow and the red on this map, because that shows us where severe thunderstorms could occur later today.

So let's zoom in a little bit to get a bit more detail. Severe thunderstorms can bring an array of weather hazards. For today it looks like the most likely hazards that the severe thunderstorms will bring are damaging wind gusts and large hailstones. The red on the map shows us where these severe thunderstorms are most likely, and that includes the highly populated coastal strip through Wollongong, Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and up to Port Macquarie, as well as adjacent inland mountain areas and even across to the western slopes and plains about as far west as Dubbo. The yellow area shows us where severe thunderstorms could occur today, just not quite as likely as what they are in the red.

In terms of timing, the storms will ramp up this afternoon, with the most active period being late afternoon and early evening between about 4 and 8 pm. After 8 pm, the storms will start to clear up across these southern areas here, including through Wollongong, Sydney and Newcastle. But further north we could continue to see stormy weather well into the night and possibly into tomorrow morning.

If these storms do ramp up and tend severe, they could bring an array of impacts, including the potential for property damage, trees coming down, roofs blowing off, fences blowing over as those winds really race through. Those same strong winds could put stress on infrastructure, in particular, bringing the potential for power outages this afternoon or this evening. And if the hailstones really do come through strongly, they can significantly and rapidly damage crops as they pass overhead.

There's another chapter to the story as well. It's not just thunderstorms today. We're also anticipating this strong southerly buster, a powerful southerly wind change, to work its way up the New South Wales coast during Friday afternoon and evening. What that will do is bring some powerful winds and drop the temperature very, very sharply most of eastern New South Wales. Will see temperatures in the 30s today. When that wind changes, it will drop by about 10 degrees in about half an hour, with the wind coming up from the south and pushing everything northwards.

As we now look at Saturday, tomorrow, we will see that the storm risk shifts further north, getting pushed up by that southerly wind flow and that means that for tomorrow, the main storm risk becomes northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland. Here is the thunderstorm outlook for Saturday. Not quite as extensive as Friday, but we could still see pockets of these severe storms, particularly over the Northern Rivers, Northern Tablelands and southern inland of the south-east coast of Queensland.

If these storms do tend to severe again tomorrow, then once again damaging wind and large hailstones are definitely possible. And keep your eye on this yellow region too. It's quite broad, so there's a chance we could see severe storms up to inland parts of Brisbane, up towards Toowoomba, across into the Northern Tablelands and down into the mid-north coast.

It will certainly be a good couple of days to keep your eyes on the weather radar, and any severe thunderstorm warnings that get issued by the Bureau of Meteorology, and you can always find those up to date warnings and forecasts on the Bureau's website and app.

Thanks for watching. Have a safe couple of days.