Severe weather update: Wind, storms and fire danger on Saturday

A spring cold front brings a buffet of weather hazards to south-eastern Australia tomorrow. G’day I’m David from the Bureau.

Let’s take a look at the multiple severe weather hazards forecast to impact multiple states during the course of tomorrow.

Now, in terms of hazards, we’re looking at damaging winds which could bring down trees and damage roofs. Minor to moderate flooding again for parts of Victoria and Tasmania. And a total fire ban for the Sydney area with hot and windy conditions there.

So let’s look at the current situation to start with. We can see a cloud band across South Australia that’s bringing rain and some thunderstorms already to that state. And then this cold front here is sweeping across the south coast of Western Australia at the moment.

And as we go into the forecast, we’ll see that system continue across southern Western Australia and then motor across the Bight during tonight and early tomorrow.

Meanwhile, rain spreads across the eastern states tonight and continues into the morning tomorrow. So steady rain across northern Tasmania and most of Victoria in particular.

Then tomorrow we can see this front reach South Australia in the early hours and then continue across Victoria and New South Wales. It’s got strong and damaging northerly winds ahead and westerly winds behind.

So packing a punch on both ends there before the system then moves out into the Tasman Sea towards the end of the day tomorrow. Much more settled conditions follow on Sunday.

So let’s take a look at the hazards one by one now working roughly from west to east, we’ll start with the damaging winds.

And you can see we’ve got Severe Weather Warnings here for damaging winds in the yellow across a wide area of south-eastern Australia, all the way from the southern Flinders Ranges in South Australia, all the way over to the Illawarra in New South Wales.

Now for Adelaide and South Australia in general, the elevated parts of the Adelaide Hills, the Mount Lofty Ranges and the Flinders Ranges expecting to see strongest winds overnight tonight and in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Gusts up to 110 km/h possible there.

Adelaide itself, not in the warning area, but it will be a windy night and morning there, conditions will ease during the daytime hours tomorrow for South Australia as the system tracks further east.

The focus tomorrow morning from sunrise through to midday will be on south-east South Australia and south-western Victoria, so plenty of showers and thunderstorms moving ashore there, bringing potentially damaging wind gusts with them as they track in off the ocean, and then the elevated areas of Victoria with the Alps and New South Wales and the Macedon Ranges as well.

A windy night there and continuing for the Eastern Alps during the course of Saturday and for the Illawarra, lastly from Wollongong down to about Batemans Bay on the south coast, damaging winds possible there with wind gusts up to 90 km/h in the afternoon hours tomorrow, and that includes parts of the Blue Mountains and the Central Tablelands as well.

We’ve got thunderstorms in the mix tomorrow too. You can see this wide green area across south-east Australia where thunderstorms are possible or likely, and then the yellow area here for Severe Thunderstorms possible.

So damaging winds is the threat with these storms. They’ll be fast moving, coming in off the ocean in the morning for south-east South Australia and south-western Victoria, as I said, with the winds.

And then the focus moves to central Victoria, including Melbourne, from the late morning to the early afternoon.

So peak risk for Melbourne for a gusty shower or storm is in the early afternoon, and particularly about the eastern suburbs there.

And then the focus mostly Gippsland in the afternoon on Saturday.

We’ve also got plenty of rain coming with this system once again, same as the systems we’ve seen over and over this winter. They keep lining up the ranges of north-east Victoria and northern Tasmania in particular.

So those areas expecting to see 30 to 40 mm for north-east Victoria, with a few spots getting 50 or even 60 mm of rain. And similar for northern Tasmania, 20 to 30 mm across a wide area, with a few spots getting 40 to 50 mm there.

So of course the catchments in those areas are really wet. They’ve seen multiple rounds of Flood Warnings this winter already.

So we’ve got a Flood Watch current again for these catchments across northern Victoria in the blue and across parts of northern Tasmania as well.

And that goes with a couple of Flood Warnings current for the Murray River near Echuca and for the Loddon River as well, which is from the previous round of rainfall last week.

Now from flood to fire, we’ve got plenty of hot air building across central and northern Australia this week, and north-westerly winds ahead of this system tomorrow will drag that hot air down to the coast.

So we’ll see temperatures reach 30 °C from Sydney and northwards along the coast as well. Really unseasonably warm temperatures, 8 to 10 °C above average, and strong winds as well.

So of course, that combination of hot and windy conditions leads to elevated fire dangers.

And that’s what we’ll see tomorrow across eastern New South Wales, the Sydney area in particularly going for Extreme Fire Danger and a Total Fire Ban that includes Sydney, the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains.

And then you can see in the yellow areas high fire dangers right across northern and north-eastern New South Wales. And it’s been a dry winter there.

There’s plenty of fires in the landscape all up the coast of eastern New South Wales and north-eastern New South Wales, so tomorrow is a day to be well aware of the risk of fire in the landscape.

So in summary again, we’ve got multiple hazards here. We’ve got the damaging winds. We’ve got the thunderstorms as well. We’ve got potential flooding again for Victoria and Tasmania.

And we’ve got that Total Fire Ban for the Sydney area.

So there’s plenty going on depending on where you live, you need to come across these hazards over the next day or two.

You can do that on our website, on our app and on our social media channels. And remember to always follow the advice of your local emergency services.

Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time.