Severe Weather Update: Wind And Flooding For SE Aus

Taking a look at our radar imagery, we can see how it crossed South Australia yesterday and is now slipping towards the south-east, bringing showers, rain areas and isolated thunderstorms to these areas, as well as some strong and gusty winds, particularly impacting the eastern Victorian alpine areas.

Now through the rest of today, we're going to see this cold front continuing to move eastwards. Showers and thunderstorms will continue across much of the south-east, including across parts of south-east South Australia as well. At the same time, a low pressure system is developing to the west of Tasmania and this will keep that wet and potentially windy weather ongoing across Tasmania a little bit longer. We're also more likely to see some heavier rainfall across Tassie through the course of today.

Through this evening, the weather system will slip offshore, but we're continuing to see that unsettled weather over the Mainland and Tasmania. Now there is a risk of damaging winds over the next few hours across the Victorian alpine areas. A Severe Weather Warning is current for damaging winds, but that risk is likely to ease in the early afternoon today.

As we go into tomorrow, we're likely to see this showery weather continuing across the south-east. A new cold front approaches and then sweeps through, bringing a fresh burst of strong and gusty winds, showers and the risk of storms. Behind this cold front, we are going to get some cooler air moving in, which means small hail and a lowering snow level from Wednesday going into Thursday.

Now, we do anticipate the risk of further damaging winds across the south-east with the second weather system. Initially, we're going to see that risk of damaging winds across eastern alpine parts of Victoria and across the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, and that risk is likely to develop through Wednesday afternoon and evening, going into the early hours of Thursday morning.

As we continue through Thursday morning, we may also see the risk of damaging winds developing across south-west Victoria and far south-east South Australia. Now a warning is probably unlikely in these areas, but it's definitely a watch point, particularly with any showers or thunderstorms that come through. But certainly for these areas further east, we may issue a severe weather warning for those later today.

Taking a look at our rainfall totals over the next few days. Many areas are expecting moderate accumulations over the next two days, and that includes parts of south-east South Australia and the Adelaide metro area, much of southern Victoria and those ranges in eastern Victoria pushing into south-east New South Wales, but especially the higher accumulations are likely across Tasmania.

In the next couple of days, we may see above 50 or 60 mm across parts of northern, western and southern Tasmania. The soils are already fairly wet in these areas, so this rainfall may likely lead to some riverine flooding across our river catchments. Flood watches have been issued in anticipation of this risk, with that flooding most likely from later today as that rain starts to move through our systems.

So to recap the key hazards we're looking at over the next few days, the bursts of strong to damaging winds could bring down trees or tree limbs, and potentially damage cars and property. The rainfall, particularly through Tasmania, could lead to riverine flooding from later today. We may also see dangerous driving conditions across the south-east due to rain and wind.

Now you can always stay up to date with the latest forecasts and warnings via the Bureau's website, the BOM Weather app and via our social media. Stay safe and we'll catch you in the next update.