It will be a windy weekend right across
south eastern Australia as three powerful cold
fronts move through. Let's first
take a look at each of these cold fronts and what we can expect
starting off with Friday. And we can see on Friday
it's already quite windy right across south east Australia. And that wind is combining with heat
across eastern New South Wales. So there is high fire danger for Sydney
and the Illawarra. And this will persist
right through the weekend. For the rest of the south east though,
we will see a brief easing in the winds Friday afternoon
and into Friday evening. But then re-intensifying as this
first cold front pushes up from the south. We will see winds intensifying
for south east South Australia, western Victoria and western Tasmania
heading into Friday night. And then into Saturday, we see those stronger, damaging winds
extending for the rest of Tasmania, Victoria and south east New South Wales,
with a second cold front coming through and that will reinvigorate
those winds across southern areas with plenty of showers
and rain behind that. And then on Sunday, that's when we're expecting the strongest
of the three cold fronts to move through. You can see that pushing up from the south
heading into Sunday, and that will bring widespread damaging
to destructive winds across multiple states,
as well as heavy bursts of rainfall, thunderstorms, local hail
and snow down to low levels. This strong cold front will push out
over the Tasman Sea on Monday. Will be quite cold behind that,
but then finally easing off late Monday into Tuesday as this next high
pressure system comes through. Now looking at the warnings
as of Friday afternoon, and we do have damaging wind warnings
covering four states and lots of these areas have already seen
damaging winds right through the week. And this could cause further
damage to trees and property. So we’re reminding people to keep an eye on the latest warnings
heading into this weekend. We'll see winds increasing
from the west tonight and extending to eastern parts of the warning area
into Saturday morning. As well as winds
we're also expecting large waves, and so we have issued a coastal hazard
warning for parts of southern Victoria that's for damaging surf along the south
west coast all the way to Wilsons Promontory, and abnormally high tides
for parts of Gippsland. We start to see those waves really
picking up, with this cold front coming through on Friday night, waves increasing
up to 5 to 6 to 7 metres offshore. But then with that stronger cold
front coming through on Sunday, that's when we start to see the waves
increasing up to 9 metres offshore of south west Victoria
and also western parts of Tasmania. And so these hazardous
coastal conditions are likely to continue. All the way into Monday. We have also seen heavy rainfall,
particularly across Tasmania, and we do have flood watches
and warnings current. So a flood watch is current across
large parts of the state. But we have already seen some heavy rain
falling, with minor flood warnings in the green and moderate flood warnings
current for the Mersey and upper parts of the Derwent river. We are expecting more rain
to come with each of those cold fronts, and so we will see more warnings
being issued over the weekend. So with plenty of wind heading
into the first weekend of spring, as well as rain and thunderstorms in some areas,
as well as snow down to lower levels. Be sure you have the latest information
for your area and you get that on the website
as well as our social media channels. And please stay safe.