Cooler conditions sweep Victoria after five-day heatwave

A COOL change is beginning to cross Victoria, bringing an end to a five-day heatwave that has devastated crops in the state’s west.

Cool change arrives in Victoria

A COOL change is beginning to cross Victoria, bringing an end to a five-day heatwave that has devastated crops in western parts of the state.

Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Andrea Peace said a cooler change — which will see temperatures drop to 6C in Horsham and 11C in Mildura tonight — had hit southwest Victoria but would not bring any much-needed rain as it continued to roll across the state.

“This particular one is a dry change, so unfortunately for areas in the west that are so desperate for rain, there’s not really anything on the horizon at this stage,” Ms Peace said.

The front is currently crossing southwest Victoria, with temperatures in and around Portland forecast to not go “much more higher than where they are, around the mid-to-high teens”.

“But, obviously in the north, it’s due to get quite hot before the change moves through,” Ms Peace said.

The warm conditions — Mildura is forecast to hit 38C today, following on from two successive days of 37.5C and four days averaging 35.3C — follows a particularly dry start to spring in line with expert concerns of the worst El Nino system since 1996.

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Many farmers in the Wimmera and Mallee have been forced to cut their grain crops for hay in light of this week’s high temperatures and strong winds.

Swan Hill is going for a forecast top of 38C today with Horsham slightly cooler at a top of 35C.

At 11.30am, the mercury was 34.9C in Mildura, 33.9C in Swan Hill and 30.5C in Horsham.

Ms Peace said the change would hit a line from Horsham to Geelong at about 2pm, pushing through a line from Mildura to Bendigo to Sale around 5pm before reaching Victoria’s North East about midnight.

“It’s a fairly fast-moving change … we can expect temperatures, particularly in the warmer places to drop by 10-15C in an hour directly behind the change,” Ms Peace said.

“This is really what we’d expect to see in January or February … it is much more like a summer pattern than a spring pattern.”

Ms Peace said there were the chance of thunderstorms for the North East this weekend and early into next week.

“If we do get some thunderstorms, some very isolated pockets could see some decent falls over the weekend and into next week, but there’s nothing significant on the outlook,” she said.