Victoria is expecting cold blasts and hail on the first day of winter
A vigorous cold front and widespread showers are moving across the state, with damaging winds expected in the eastern bayside area, southwest coast, central ranges and the Grampians later today.
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The city’s eastern bayside suburbs are expected to cop the brunt of damaging winds and hail forecast to sweep across Victoria later today.
The weather bureau has issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds and squally showers, with wind gusts expected to reach 90 to 100km/h in coastal and elevated areas.
Bureau senior meteorologist Keris Arndt said the change would hit Melbourne between 6-7pm but the strong winds would be short lived.
“The eastern bayside suburbs are most likely to be impacted by damaging wind gusts,” Mr Arndt said.
“We’ll have that squally line move through and then the winds will ease off pretty quickly behind it, it will still stay a bit blustery but the risk of damaging wind gusts eases pretty quickly behind the change.”
Mr Arndt said peak gusts of up to 90km/h were most likely along the southwest coast, central ranges and the Grampians but localised strong winds elsewhere were “not out of the question”.
The weather bureau said Warrnambool, Ballarat, Geelong, Melbourne, Wonthaggi and Bacchus Marsh were locations likely to be affected by damaging winds.
A severe weather warning for East Gippsland and the northeast has been cancelled.
Strong wind gusts of 85km/h have already been recorded in alpine areas near Mt Buller and Mt William.
Overnight a cold front drenched most of the state with the eastern suburbs recording 11mm of rain and the city 5mm.
Strathbogie in northern Victoria saw 25mm, Eildon 14.8mm, Ararat 14mm and Coldstream 10.8mm.
“Winter has come through with a wet splash this morning, it started raining straight away and it’s pretty chilly out there as well,” Mr Arndt said.
“There’s very cold air moving across the state – we might see a dusting of snow across the peaks of the Grampians this morning and early afternoon and in the eastern ranges it’s still cold enough to see snow down to 1200m and small hail pretty much anywhere throughout the state today.”
About 10mm of rain is also forecast on Tuesday while the northern country areas will likely see foggy and frosty mornings for the rest of the week.
The bureau’s long-range forecast manager Andrew Watkins said we were in for a wetter winter which means cooler days but slightly warmer than usual nights.
“Areas with a higher chance of above average rainfall are also looking at increased chances of cooler than average days because they are more likely to have cloud cover and more evaporative cooling in the coming months.
“Conversely, it means our nights are more likely to be warmer than average, because that cloud cover will prevent heat from escaping during the evenings.”
Dr Watkins said the arrival of tropical moisture from the Indian Ocean meant Australia could have its wettest winter in four years.
“We last saw this happen in 2016, when a strong negative Indian Ocean Dipole formed to the west of Australia.
“We aren’t guaranteed the same results as 2016, but the warmer ocean temperatures surrounding the continent will push us in the direction of better than average rainfall.”
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