A band of wet and stormy weather is sweeping across eastern Australia today. I am Angus here at the Bureau. It’s Monday the 3rd of November, and this is a Severe Weather Update talking about this cold front here, which is moving eastwards across the country. As the sun rose this morning, we could see exactly where our cold front was, thanks to the band of cloud.

In fact, a few thousand kilometres worth of cloud stretching all the way from somewhere south of Tasmania, across Tassie, through Victoria, western parts of New South Wales, western Queensland, and back here into the Territory, an unbroken band of cloud with the cold front lying underneath. And there has been a decent amount of rainfall underneath this band of cloud as well.

Quite persistent wet weather in some areas, although the absolute rainfall totals haven’t been especially alarming. There are a few areas that I’d like to highlight as having seen quite a lot of rain, including around Melbourne and central Victoria, where it’s rained for about 12 hours nonstop through last night and this morning, brought over 30 mm of rain to the city, and 30 mm to 40 mm to other parts of the state.

But we can see a gradual eastward movement to the rain band, and so it will be clearing up in the next few hours. There’s also been some showery weather across this part of South Australia, including around Adelaide, not quite such persistent wet weather, but certainly some spells of it, and the chance of some storms in that area through the course of the day as well.

Further north, I also wanted to highlight this wet weather up around Mount Isa and western parts of Queensland, typically quite dry through these regions here, but they have seen ongoing wet weather last night and this morning. A real healthy dose of rain out over these outback areas in the north-west could certainly cause some road closures out that way.

Just in the last few hours, the rain has started to ease off here, but it might still be wet for the next few hours before clearing completely. Here’s the synoptic chart for Monday afternoon and evening. It’s quite a complex weather system that we’re dealing with, so there are a few areas that I wanted to highlight in particular. So this map is going to come to a pause at 8:00 pm AEDT, 8:00 pm down in this area, 7:00 pm in Queensland, and a little bit earlier in the day for central parts. The band of rain, which has been stuck in place this morning over Victoria, is moving eastwards.

That’s going to lie over Gippsland, as well as central and southern parts of New South Wales, and actually leans back up into central parts of Queensland as well, with some patchy falls over these quite dry areas through central Queensland. But what I want you to note for Queensland is even though this is our main band of rain here, we’ve got the secondary signal in front of that rain band for wet and stormy weather closer to the east coast.

This is our storm risk for the day today, and I will, in a second, show you that thunderstorm outlook map. Also, a couple of things in the south: we’ve got a continuation of showery, stormy weather across southern South Australia, western Victoria, and the far south-west of New South Wales today, behind this leading band of rain. And we’ve also got this low-pressure area here west of Tasmania, which is steering the wind for the next few days, ensuring that it will stay breezy, cold, and showery across the south-east.

Now, I mentioned thunderstorms, and thunderstorms could well be a key part of the weather for today. So this is Monday’s thunderstorm outlook map. The colours show where we could see storms today, but in particular, focus in on the yellow, which shows where we could see severe thunderstorms today. This includes a pretty broad area, inland parts of the Central Coast, Capricornia, Wide Bay–Burnett, and south-east Queensland up into the Central Tablelands and the Darling Downs as well.

Some of these areas have been hit very hard by thunderstorms in the last 48 hours or so. Storms are also possible in New South Wales, including across the north-east of the state from Port Macquarie up to the border, and a separate area of storms around Sydney, the Hunter, Wollongong, the South Coast, and the Central Tablelands. So lots of people may be impacted by storms.

Those impacts are going to be different depending on where you live. In the far north, the most likely impact of severe thunderstorms is damaging wind gusts. Through these central areas here, both damaging wind and large hail are possible later on today. And through this southern region here, damaging wind, large hail, and heavy rain are all possible as the thunderstorms get going.

It looks like the peak thunderstorm activity will occur through the second half of the afternoon and into the evening, and it could well continue to be wet and stormy after dark. As a broader picture across the entire country, a few other areas could also see storms, but less of a chance of severe thunderstorms, including around Victoria and South Australia. Broadly speaking, there is a widespread storm risk across the tropical north for the Kimberley, the Northern Territory, and the far north of Queensland.

Let’s now look at Tuesday, which will be the last day this weather system plays a significant role, because it is going to cross the east coast and move out into the Tasman Sea. What does that mean? It means a band of rain probably through the morning for most eastern areas, and then brightening up and becoming sunny, but a cooler wind flow kicking in through the second half of the day. We will continue to see showers and strong winds across Victoria and Tasmania, and that is particularly notable for Victoria because it’s a public holiday.

It is Cup Day, the running of the Melbourne Cup, and that’s likely to be punctuated by some cold temperatures, some strong wind, and a few showers throughout the course of the day. But at least it won’t be a day like today, where it has rained nonstop for around about 12 hours.

The final thing I want to show you is this map of temperatures here, just to highlight the stark contrast. On Monday, it’s a very warm day across the eastern side of the country, warm and humid through Queensland and New South Wales. Temperatures are above average here, but in behind this cold change, we’ve got a significant outbreak of cold air which is spreading across the south. So almost all areas except for the far north-west are going to see the temperatures fall away quite a lot through the first couple of days of this week.

There’s been a whole lot of information in this video, so if you want to double-check anything or find your forecast, you can get that on the Bureau’s website or app. Thanks for watching.