Severe weather update: Another very wet day in the south-east

Saturday will be another very wet day across south-eastern Australia, the third in a row. I’m Angus, I’m here at the Bureau of Meteorology. This is a Severe Weather Update for Saturday the 3rd of October.

The last two days have been very wet and with today also being very wet, some of those wet weather impacts certainly expected to continue on Saturday, including the risk of riverine flooding. We have already seen a couple of rivers experience some flooding, but with more rain throughout today.

The number of rivers which do see that wet weather is expected to climb, and we’re always worried about the risk of flooded roads when we see rain across the country. That means transport disruption and delay. If you’re travelling across the country.

We could also see some bursts of heavy rain and potentially damaging wind with thunderstorms, especially around parts of New South Wales as we push into Saturday afternoon.

Let’s take a look at the radar. This is the observation of the actual rain that has been falling through last night and to this morning. A big band of rain extending through parts of New South Wales and Victoria.

And if you look closely, it looks like it’s wrapping around something. And indeed it is wrapping around the centre of a low pressure area, which is just along the New South Wales-Victoria border at the moment.

If we take that same low pressure area that we can see in the rainfall pattern now, and we forecast where it’s going to go through the remainder of the day today, it’s likely to continue to drift eastwards along that state border.

Then this low pressure area here is going to fade away this afternoon. It’s going to weaken. And a secondary low is going to strengthen and become the main driver of this weather pattern here.

That one will be down over south-eastern waters quite close to the Gippsland region. And it will drive a strong southerly flow and some rainfall into this part of the country here. That’s why Gippsland is one of our key areas of focus for severe weather in the next 24 hours.

In fact, these are our Severe Weather Warnings for heavy rainfall throughout the rest of Saturday and even into Sunday morning. We’ve got two key areas in Victoria which we are watching out for for heavy rain.

The first of those, the one in the west down on the Otway coastline here from Torquay down to Cape Otway, including parts of the Great Ocean Road, the coast and the adjacent Otway Ranges. Has been very wet here last night over 100 mm have fallen in the past 24 hours at a couple of weather stations down in this part of the state, so it’s very soggy.

The remaining rainfall will continue to fall through the rest of the morning on Saturday and into the afternoon, but we should see the end of the rain by Saturday evening here.

Can’t say the same thing for this larger area to the east. Now this covers parts of west and south Gippsland from Bairnsdale down through Sale, Traralgon down to Wilsons Prom, Warragul, Moe and Leongatha.

So it’s a really broad area in Gippsland where we’re expecting to see further rainfall and this is all day Saturday, potentially peaking Saturday evening and into the night. The rain in this eastern area will continue into Sunday morning.

Should ease back by about lunchtime on Sunday, perhaps still a bit wet into the afternoon, but certainly by Sunday evening we’ll be drying up right across the board.

So how much rain could we get in these areas? We can see these little clusters here where we’ve got the brighter colours, we’ve got the reds, we’ve got the purples around that Gippsland region.

So in the next 24 hours we could see 50 mm to 80 mm as a pretty widespread value there, with isolated places perhaps getting above 100 mm. This is on top of the rain you’ve already had in the past few days. So I’ll say it again, the soils are already saturated.

Slightly less rainfall expected around the Otway coast area because we’ve just got fewer hours for that rain to fall, with it clearing up by this evening. But another 30 mm to 50 mm on top of last night’s deluge could certainly fall there.

If you’re looking more broadly across the map, you can see another area here where there could be elevated rainfall with thunderstorms a little bit later on today, north of ACT, inland of the Illawarra, over parts of the Southern and Central Tablelands, we could see 20 mm to 40 mm.

And if those storms really ramp up, isolated places could get more than that. Here’s a look at the Flood Watches. There’s just the one Flood Warning for the Bunyip River at the moment in south-eastern parts of Victoria, but a whole lot more rivers could continue to see rises today.

And I know that we are monitoring closely and starting to see some of these other rivers. Their water levels are climbing, so it’s highly likely that more Flood Warnings will be issued today around parts of Victoria. So definitely keep an eye on those.

They will be dynamic and they will be updated quickly those warnings. Here’s a quick look at the thunderstorm map. I talked about the risk of storms and ACT and New South Wales.

You can see it’s extensive. In particular, look at the yellow area. That’s where severe thunderstorms are possible. And that’s a big region from well the centre of the state, the north of the state up around Tamworth, almost out to Cobar, right down through the Central Tablelands.

Through the likes of Bathurst and Orange, down towards ACT and Canberra and even down towards parts of the Illawarra, inland parts of Sydney and parts of the south coast and across the border into parts of Gippsland as well.

If storms do get going, it’s likely to peak during the warmer hours of the day being the afternoon hours, and those storms could bring heavy rain or damaging wind gusts. And in a couple of places there’s even a risk of some large hailstones.

Finally, just to quickly wrap up how we’re looking on Sunday, continue to see some rainfall around eastern Victoria on Sunday morning. But take a look. 3 p.m.

Sunday. The low, the rain, it’s out over the ocean. We are really clearing up for the second half of the day, so it just means about another 24 to 30 hours. We’ve got to deal with this rain and potential flooding.

Then we have got much, much calmer weather settling in across Victoria by the end of the weekend. So across that next 24 or 30 hours, do stay up to date with the warnings and the forecasts on the BOM website or the BOM Weather app.

We’ll keep you up to date through social media too. Thanks for watching.