Persistent rain and strong winds will sweep across New South Wales into the weekend, the Bureau of Meteorology predicts, with Sydney on the “southern cusp” of the stormy weather.
Senior meteorologist Angus Hines said Sydney’s weather could shift from storms to a “dreary” mix of wind, rain and cloud. It would be “persistently windy” and “quite chilly”, he said.
While the intense storms that lashed Sydney on Wednesday had developed in Victoria and swept east, now it was a low pressure system in the Tasman Sea that would feed strong winds and rain onto the east coast of NSW, he said.
That same weather system was expected to impact parts of eastern Victoria and south-east Queensland. The bureau has warned of damaging winds, hail and heavy rainfall for parts of the Gold Coast area.
Eastern NSW, particularly the Northern Rivers region, were at the highest risk for severe thunderstorms on Thursday, Hines said, with more heavy rain, damaging winds and possibly large hail expected.
The Hunter and mid-north coast could also expect heavy rainfall and damaging winds over the next 48 hours.
On the other side of the country, Western Australia faces the highest risk of a tropical cyclone so far this season, Hines said.
“The most likely impact of that would be some heavy rainfall around the Pilbara and northern WA, strong winds particularly near the coast of the Pilbara.” Very large waves were likely along the northern WA coastline, he said.
Elsewhere, very hot weather would continue across northeastern Queensland, he added, where severe intensity heatwaves from Bundaberg to north of Cairns were forecast over the coming days.
“Lots of those areas are between four and eight degrees warmer than usual for this time of year during the day,” he said.
Wednesday’s thunderstorms produced 1.2 million lightning strikes, damaging wind gusts above 100km/h in many areas, and sharp bursts of rain, he said. “It was very dramatic.
“Pretty much everyone from Melbourne up to Sydney and all areas in between, including across Canberra, would have seen a taste of that … as that band of storms swept through.”
Wind gusts up to 107km/h were recorded at Sydney airport, 109km/h in Newcastle and 120km/h in Williamtown.
While most rainfall totals were between 20mm – 40mm, Eurobodalla on the NSW south coast was drenched with 127mm.
The weather caused significant damage and widespread power outages.
More than 143,000 households and businesses across NSW lost power, with approximately 90% due to lightning strikes, according to Ausgrid. Northern Sydney, the Hunter and Newcastle regions were hardest hit.
Ausgrid said crews had worked through the night to restore power to 50,000 homes and businesses. They were focused on returning power to remaining customers as quickly as possible.
The State Emergency Service received more than 2250 calls and responded to 1800 incidents.
A man in his 80s died at Cowra after a tree fell on his vehicle, the SES said.
Australia’s land surface has warmed by 1.5C since 1910, according to the BoM, making heatwaves longer and more intense. The climate crisis was also causing the number of extremely hot days to increase.
Article by:Source – Petra Stock
