Severe weather update: Severe storms for Vic, NSW and Qld this week

Tuesday could be a big day for severe thunderstorms across eastern Australia, with the potential for some widespread damage. There are also some thunderstorms around on Monday. Don’t want to discount those, so this video we will attack both of them. A severe weather update for Monday and Tuesday as storms affect multiple parts of the country. I’m Angus and let’s dive right in with radar imagery from Monday morning.

Starting off focused on Victoria. We’ve had rain move in from South Australia overnight last night in from the north-west and now spreading it towards the Melbourne area. This is the main band of rain that we’re seeing this morning. No storms caught up in that at the moment and not anticipating much stormy weather with that main band of rain, but we could see some storms develop behind this band of rainfall.

And in fact we’ve got a risk of severe thunderstorms behind that band of rain across north-western Victoria during Monday afternoon. The yellow area shows where our severe storms could form. It includes locations like Bendigo and Echuca, up past Kerang towards Swan Hill, as well as down across parts of the Mallee and Wimmera to about Horsham. In that area this afternoon we could see severe thunderstorms pop up with localised areas of heavy rainfall, damaging winds or even some large hailstones.

More broadly, across Victoria and New South Wales. We’ve got a chance of thunderstorms shown in the green, but not as likely to turn severe and bring those damaging conditions. But if we zoom northwards a little bit, we could also see some severe thunderstorms in the yellow regions around our classic spring storm outbreak locations, including the Northern and Central Tablelands of New South Wales, as well as parts of eastern and central Queensland from the coast about where Sunshine Coast is, up through Noosa, Gympie, Maryborough and Bundaberg, and inland into the Central Highlands around Emerald.

These places could also bring wind, rain and hail risks this afternoon and definitely if you live in or around these areas, do stay up to date with any warnings that happen to get issued. But I want to jump into Tuesday because things are looking to crank up a notch on the dial on Tuesday, bringing some more significant damage to eastern areas.

That’s because we’ve got this low pressure area and this associated dashed blue line that’s a low pressure trough, both moving eastwards, heading out towards the coast. There it is going to clash with warm and humid air from the Coral Sea. And that meeting of weather systems is why we’re going to see much more extensive and potentially severe storms build across our eastern seaboard on Tuesday, and the storms on Tuesday could bring some pretty significant hazards when they get going in the afternoon, including hail damage with large or even giant hail in some areas that can dimple the top of cars, like what you see here in this photo can also damage crops and things like windows and roof lights.

We could see wind damage as well that can bring down trees and branches and potentially cause power outages. And of course, if those storms bring heavy rainfall, we could see localised flash flooding and that can lead to road closures, detours, and potential for some isolated inundation of homes and properties.

Let’s look at the forecast for thunderstorms for Tuesday, tomorrow. And this is where the action is expected to happen across New South Wales and Queensland. Lots of colours on the map here. It’s the yellow and the red where I really want you to pay attention to. Those are our severe thunderstorm possible in yellow, our severe thunderstorm likely in red being our main area.

So we’ll zoom into that red area a touch here across the east coast on the New South Wales side of the border, we’re looking at parts of the mid-north coast, the Northern Rivers, also the Northern Tablelands from about Port Macquarie or Coffs Harbour northwards for that most likely severe storm. In Queensland, it’s right across the south-east that does include the capital, Brisbane, as well as the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast and areas in and around there up into Toowoomba and the Darling Downs, then further north into Gympie and the Wide Bay-Burnett, up across Kingaroy and even into parts of the Central Tablelands.

I want to drop off the names here and just draw a slightly smaller area nested within this region. So this is an area here which is including the western suburbs of Brisbane, out toward Ipswich and then up to Toowoomba, as well as across into parts of the Downs like Oakey and Warwick, then up towards Kingaroy and maybe about as far north as Gayndah.

This area here within the red area is our highest risk for what we describe as high-end weather hazards. That means giant hailstones five centimetres or larger across and destructive winds 125 km/h or greater in intensity. So this could be where we see the most significant storms that may bring the most punchy weather and the highest potential for damage.

So over the next few days, if you’re in any of these affected areas, you can keep an eye on the radar and any thunderstorm warnings. You can find both of those on the bureau’s website and the BOM Weather app. Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.