Severe Weather Update 18 July 2024: Damaging winds, snow and rain for south-east Australia

 

Severe Weather Update 18 July 2024: Damaging winds, snow and rain for south-east Australia


A strong cold front is set to bring damaging winds, rain, hail and more snow to south-eastern Australia from Friday.

The Bureau has issued Severe Weather Warnings for damaging winds and these cover parts of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT and damaging winds above 90 kilometres an hour do have the potential to bring down trees and power lines.

It can also create dangerous blizzard conditions across elevated alpine areas.

Winds will initially increase across South Australia's Mount Lofty Ranges from Friday morning, before expanding to other coastal parts of South Australia.

 

In Victoria, damaging winds are possible from late Friday afternoon about the north-eastern ranges before extending into New South Wales and the ACT from Friday evening.

And these warnings will be updated, so make sure you have the latest information for your area.

This cold front has already delivered between 15 to 50 mm for Western Australia, and into Friday morning will race across the Bight with strengthening north to north-westerly winds ahead of the system.

It's expected to cross South Australia during Friday morning before extending into Victoria and Tasmania during the afternoon, and showers will increase across south-eastern parts of New South Wales by Saturday morning.

And with this system we could see small hail across southern districts and for Victoria in particular, abnormally high tides could cause flooding of low lying coastal areas, particularly across Port Phillip Bay and Lakes Entrance.

Port Phillip Bay

Lakes Entrance

And a lot of this rainfall is coming across relatively wet catchments and so, in addition to current Flood Warnings, we may see new river rises.

So, make sure you have the latest information before you set out on your traveling.

By Sunday morning, we can expect broadly between 10 to 25 mm of rainfall across southern areas.

We could see isolated falls in excess of 50 mm across the alpine areas and of course, much of this may fall as snow.

So, having a closer look at the snow forecast, we look at the snow level here.

And by about Friday night or Saturday morning, we'll see the snow level fall to about 900 meters for New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

For the alpine resorts, that will mean healthy snowfalls.

but for other low lying areas we could see snow flurries, including for the New South Wales Central Tablelands, and in Victoria, the Grampians and Central Ranges.

Central Tablelands

Grampians

Central Ranges

The snow level will fall across northern New South Wales as we head into Sunday and there is a possibility of flurries from the Barrington Tops up into the Northern Tablelands.

Barrington Tops

Northern Tablelands

So, with a wintry mix ahead for much of south-eastern Australia with damaging winds, rain and hail be sure you have the latest information from the Bureau's website and social media and please stay safe.