Severe weather update: Rain and storms across the south-east

Rain and thunderstorms for Adelaide and Melbourne this afternoon and this evening, central and eastern Victoria on Friday and then pushing into New South Wales on Saturday, including Sydney.

That’s the severe weather story across the south-east for the next few days.

There’s plenty of rain around, with tropical moisture drawing into a low pressure system across south-east Australia. Rain and thunderstorms in the mix, so let’s take a look at the details.

Let’s take a look at the impacts, first, river flooding is possible across mainly northern Victoria, flash flooding across many areas as well with heavy rain and thunderstorms. Heavy peak hour rain is possible for Melbourne on Thursday evening in the evening peak, and thunderstorms are possible, or even likely, over many areas, with severe thunderstorms on the forecast each day.

So, let’s take a look at the total forecast rain, so this is rain from Thursday through to Monday. And you can see large areas of yellow and orange, that’s 20 to 40 mm over a broad area of south-eastern Australia.

And then the pink and magenta and purple areas heavier totals 50 to 100, even 150 mm possible locally, particularly over eastern Victoria here in the darker shades, but also potentially over the Otways and maybe parts of southern New South Wales as well.

So let’s have a look day by day now, we’ll start with Thursday because this is a complicated story. So for Thursday, here’s the thunderstorm map. The yellow areas, large areas of severe thunderstorms possible. Heavy rain is the main threat through central South Australia, with damaging winds and large hail in the mix as well for areas further north and west in South Australia. And then we’ve got this yellow area here down near Geelong and the Surf Coast in Victoria. Heavy rainfall is possible in severe thunderstorms there on Thursday afternoon.

Now let’s see what that looks like on the weather map, and you can see this large rain band here extending right across the south-east. It’s really thickening up this afternoon so it’s going to produce some good rainfall totals as we’ve seen over the next few days.

Here’s the cold front sliding by to the south that’s picking up all that moisture that’s coming down from the tropics and squeezing it out as rainfall.

Now, there’s a bit of rain for Tasmania today as well, but severe impacts are unlikely from rain in Tasmania. This is very much a mainland south-east Australian story.

So let’s see how the rainfall accumulates through today. And we’ll see large areas of 15 mm to 20 mm or more accumulate across southern South Australia and through much of Victoria, with a focus through Melbourne and then Gippsland through the evening hours on Thursday. So, some parts of Melbourne could see 30 mm to 40 mm later today, which may not be a severe heavy rain per se, but can cause a lot of impacts through Melbourne with that amount of rain in a short time.

Now, let’s look ahead to Friday, and you can see the focus is very much on Victoria on Friday, a yellow area for severe thunderstorms possible through northern Victoria and into parts of southern New South Wales as well.

That focus shifts through the day on Friday, so it starts off in northern Victoria in the early hours of Friday morning, with severe thunderstorms possible there and then the focus shifts into eastern Victoria through the second half of Friday and into New South Wales as well later in the day Friday too, and then further showers and storms develop through Western and Central Victoria late on Friday.

Now, this does depend on how this low pressure system develops here, it’s expected to develop over south-western New South Wales during Friday and then shift very slowly south-east over Victoria during Saturday and we’ll see that in a minute. Now, how does the rainfall accumulate through Victoria on Friday? You can see these pink shades popping up here, so, plenty of rain expected right through the day for eastern Victoria. Melbourne itself will see rain in the morning and the evening, but could be quite dry for much of the daytime hours on Friday. And again, further rainfall accumulating, particularly through parts of New South Wales and further east in Victoria during Friday as well.

And now we’ll look ahead at Saturday, so you can see the shift further east and further north, so a yellow area here again for severe thunderstorms possible through parts of western New South Wales on Saturday, with damaging winds and large hail possible in storms there. Heavy rainfall can’t be ruled out as well, as we’ve seen, there’s lots of moisture in the atmosphere ready to come out of showers and thunderstorms as rain. And heavy rain possible down here in eastern Victoria through much of Gippsland on Saturday as well. So what does that look like?

We’ll see this system, as I said, it’s going to move very slowly south-east across Victoria during Saturday. You see these strong south-easterly winds that are pumping into the Victorian coast during Saturday, that could produce heavy rain through parts of the coast, we’ll see that in a second. And extending a trough through New South Wales as well, with showers and thunderstorms extending across western New South Wales as we’ve seen, and then reaching Sydney later in the day on Saturday. So there’s the rainfall accumulations to the end of Saturday.

Now I want to zoom in here on eastern Victoria, as I said, there’s these strong, moist south-easterly winds pumping into the southern Victorian coast, so that could produce heavy rain over parts of Gippsland, around the Strzelecki Ranges, around Mount Baw Baw as well. We’ll likely see a Severe Weather Warning issued for this area closer to the time, depending on how this low is forecast to track. Heavy rain could also extend over the Otway Ranges, which stick out into that south-easterly flow, so you could easily see 50 mm to 80 mm or more for the Otway Ranges on Saturday.

So we’re likely to see Severe Thunderstorm Warnings over the next few days, that Severe Weather Warning as well as I mentioned for Gippsland and potentially the Otways too.

The other thing we’ve got is a Flood Watch current for all these catchments across Victoria. Many of these catchments across the north saw multiple Flood Warnings through the winter, it’s been a much drier month through September, but these catchments are still ready to flood if they get enough rainfall, which they may over the next few days. And many of these catchments through Gippsland as well are expected to get a lot of rain over the next few days.

That’s all the details we’ve got for you for now. If you live in these areas, or if you’re travelling during school holidays to these areas, please stay up to date with the latest forecasts and warnings on our website, on our app, and follow our social media channels for more.

Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.