A weekend of severe thunderstorms lies ahead for much of south-eastern Australia, with heatwaves ongoing for the east coast. We start by taking a look at today's thunderstorm forecast, which shows that storms are possible across much of the south-east from parts of eastern South Australia, throughout much of New South Wales and Victoria, including parts of northern Tasmania as well.

Now, any thunderstorms today and over the next few days could bring us some gusty winds and some punchy showers. But it's the severe storm areas today and over the weekend that we really want to focus on. Our severe storm area today, marked in yellow, covers parts of New South Wales, South Australia and northern Victoria. Storms in that area today could bring us the risk of damaging wind gusts. Now these are wind gusts strong enough to bring down trees, tree limbs, damage powerlines, potentially damage your car or property as well. Through the course of today, it's a good idea to keep an eye out for any Severe Thunderstorm Warnings we may need to issue.

As we go into tomorrow storms continue across parts of the south-east. A little bit of a reprieve for south-east South Australia and parts of Victoria, but continuing across much of New South Wales. Severe storms are possible once again through south-east New South Wales and parts of the ACT. Tomorrow they bring us the risk of heavy rainfall that could lead to flash flooding, large hailstones and damaging wind gusts there too. For your weekend plans, it's a good idea to keep this severe storm risk in mind, as it can quickly lead to very dangerous driving conditions when you're out and about and getting those last-minute Christmas things done.

As we go into Sunday, however, we see our severe storm risk peaking across south-eastern Australia. Storms become possible once again across more widespread parts of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, with severe storms possible across large parts of the south-east too. In fact, severe storms are likely in this red area here you see across parts of far south-east New South Wales and north-east Victoria. Now, severe storms on Sunday bring us the risk of heavy rainfall, large hailstones and damaging wind gusts once again. There’ll likely to be most widespread on Sunday and bring the greatest potential for damage.

One of the contributing factors of this is an in feed of moisture. Here we can see our weather systems at play on Sunday. A cold front moving across the south-east, linking up with a low pressure trough that's drawing in significant moisture from areas further north in Australia. That moisture is feeding into the storms and helping to produce that severe storm risk for the end of the weekend.

Now, this cold front and low pressure system do move away through the later part of Sunday into Monday, and we see a clearing of conditions through the far south-east. But storms will likely continue through north-east New South Wales into early next week.

Now, for some, it's not just the storms that are of concern this weekend, it's also the heat. We've seen some fairly hot weather already across the south-east over the last few days, but for the weekend it's really going to focus through New South Wales. Widespread low to severe-intensity heatwaves are expected over the coming days through much of eastern New South Wales. We could even see pockets of extreme-intensity heatwaves through parts of the south-east.

Now this is a reminder for all communities to stay cool, stay hydrated and take care of each other in this hot period. As we go through the weekend, we're going to see the heatwaves really continuing through New South Wales, particularly through those eastern districts. But as we push towards the later part of the weekend into early next week, we start to see some easing across the southern parts of New South Wales. All the while, these heatwaves extend into south-east Queensland. This is happening as conditions continue to cool off further in the south-east, with that cooler air pushing up into southern Queensland. The heat will persist, however, across much of the east coast and south-east Queensland into the early part of next week.

Just to recap some of those severe weather impacts we're expecting over the coming days now. Firstly, the severe thunderstorms possible each day between now and the end of the weekend, even into early next week as well. We could see damaging wind gusts, heavy rainfall and large hailstones that could produce damage or dangerous driving conditions across the weekend. We might also see more widespread rain on Sunday that could lead to flash flooding and very dangerous conditions for all those out and about on the last weekend before Christmas.

Finally, the heatwaves and heat stress, particularly for those in New South Wales, is a concern once again because people are more likely to be out and about. It's definitely something to build into your weekend plans. As always, you can find the detailed forecasts and warnings for your area via the Bureau’s website, the BOM Weather app, and via our social media. Stay up to date and stay safe. We'll catch you next time.