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. 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. 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. 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.