Heaviest rain and snow in years ahead for southern Australia, set to bring drought relief
After two years of high-pressure domination, a triplet of low-pressure systems is about to deliver rain across nearly every agricultural region of Australia, and for once the best falls will reach all the right places.
Rainfall this week is likely to be the heaviest in one to two years for much of South Australia and the southern Murray Basin, while many Western Australian farmers are rejoicing through the wettest July in four years.
Across alpine regions, the winter storms will dump further heavy snow — laying the platform for the 2025 ski season to rival some of the best so far this century.
The ingredients for widespread rain are lining up on the weather maps this week.
Three rain producing fronts will sweep across southern states, but unlike standard fronts, each will lead to the formation of a low-pressure system near our southern coastline — the exact pattern which has been notably absent during recent years.
To complete the recipe for a solid soaking, an infeed of tropical moisture will flow into system two, which along with its relative slow movement, will ensure more than just passing showers.
Front number one already hit WA on Sunday, dropping up to 35 millimetres on the coast and up to 22mm over the wheat belt.
The system then swept into SA on Monday while spawning a low-pressure system in the Bight, and continues to track east on Tuesday, spreading showers over south-east Australia.
During the next 48 hours, the SA coast, along with the ranges of New South Wales and Victoria can expect around 10 to 20mm of rain, however this system is just a taste of the main event.
Another powerful front will reach south-west WA late Wednesday, and this system will cause the development of a band of cloud across Australia's interior on Thursday as it draws moisture south from the northern Indian Ocean.
This rainband will then intensify on Friday and wrap around a developing low near Eyre Peninsula, leading to the most widespread day of rain SA has seen in several years.
The band of rain will then spread across eastern states from late Friday to Sunday, stretching thousands of kilometres from tropical Queensland to Tasmania.
Sunday will also see a third vigorous front arriving on the shores of WA, leading to another burst of widespread showers for the southern half of the state.
Below is a forecast map of rain across the next eight days from a leading global model, and it shows at least 20mm across nearly all agricultural areas of southern Australia, and up to around 100mm around the Alps along with small pockets of the WA and SA coasts.
For many regions in drought, the upcoming week should produce the heaviest falls in well over a year, including：
Widespread rain will also spread to areas of eastern Australia further north which are not in drought, with up to 20mm landing as far north as tropical Queensland.
Of course, one swallow doesn't make a season, and what's critical for sustained drought relief is follow up falls.
After drenching WA on Sunday and Monday, the third front will likely reach south-east states by the middle of next week, while medium range outlooks are favouring further fronts through the beginning of August.
This all points to an easing of the current drought, at least in the short term, although it will take several months of good rain and restocking before farmers consider the drought may be breaking.
Forecasts for this winter hinted at drought relief, and that's an outcome which is paying off, however what's more unexpected is the snow season.
Heavy snow in June and July has lifted the natural snow depth at Spencers Creek, between Perisher Valley and Charlotte Pass, to around 1.5 metres — about 40 centimetres above average for this point in the season.
After a wintry mix of rain and wet snow on Tuesday, the upcoming series of fronts should deliver at least 50cm of fresh snow this week.
For Spencers Creek, which is a representation of the snow quality on the higher slopes, this week's storm should comfortably send the season's peak depth to near 2 metres — a mark which has only been reached eight times this century.
Considering snow normally continues to accumulate through August, and occasionally through September, a platform has been laid for potentially the best ski season since at least 2000.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
17 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Bigger, more frequent' hail forecast for Australian cities
Younger generations of Australians are being warned to expect significantly larger and more frequent hail into the future with a new study revealing which cities are most at risk. The paper from UNSW's Dr Timothy Raupach and Dr Joanna Aldridge looked at the possible changes a 2.4 degree rise in global temperatures would have on Australian hailstorms from 2080-2100. 'Between (time periods), there were increases in seasonal hail days of 29 per cent around Sydney/Canberra and 15 per cent around Brisbane,' Dr Raupach told NewsWire. 'Mean hail size increased by 0.5mm around Melbourne, Sydney/Canberra, and Brisbane, while maximum hail size, important for damage potential, increased by 7.8mm around Melbourne and 3.9mm around Sydney/Canberra.' Dr Raupach said any hail above two centimetres in diameter was considered damaging. 'Here we're talking about very large hailstones, sort of five centimetres or even 10 centimetres,' Dr Raupach said. 'Those are kinds of hail that can punch through people's roofs and cause their roof tiles to break and then you get flooding inside the house and of course they also can damage cars and be very dangerous for people as well. 
 'Because the damage you get from a hailstorm correlates very closely with the size of the hailstones that are produced by that storm, it indicates that in those regions we would be looking at an increased damage risk.' Data from the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) shows hail is already one of Australia's most costly natural disasters with the frozen water missiles responsible for more than 20 per cent of insurance losses in Australia from 1967 to 2023. Hail is also not currently part of the building regulations Australian constructors are expected to adhere to, it's a point Dr Raupach believes can be acted on now to strengthen our cities into the future. 'I think there's room for discussions around how they could be built in because hail already – even without the future climate forecast – causes really significant damage,' he said. 'It's a leading driver of insured losses year to year. 'So building in things like hail resilience into our building standards would be a really good way to start to strengthen our cities. And then we can also look at possible future changes as well.' Dr Raupach said the research was still in its early stages and further studies were needed to gain greater clarity and confidence in predictions. 'This is just one study, so it's looking at it from one angle. It's using one simulation and one model,' he said. 'Ideally, we'd have multiple simulations in what's called an ensemble where you have lots of different simulations and you can look at how much they agree or disagree.' For those who are confused how a rise in global temperatures equates to giant hail balls, Dr Raupach explained for every degree the atmosphere warms, it can hold 7 per cent more moisture. This added moisture means more 'fuel' for passing weather systems to draw on, when that weather system is a hail producing one it means larger and more damaging hail.
ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Giant hail threat increases for Australian cities as climate warms
The frequency of "giant" hail and the number of hail days in a season could increase substantially for multiple Australian cities as the climate warms, a new study has found. The University of New South Wales study modelled the severity of hailstorms for the current and future climate across Australia's most hail-prone major cities, including Brisbane, the Sydney/Canberra area, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. It is one of the first studies to simulate how hailstorm frequency and severity — one of the most costly natural perils in Australia — may change in the future. It also looked at the WA goldfields town of Kalgoorlie, which the researchers said was a hotspot for hail. The study found that while the overall frequency of hailstorms only increased for a few cities, the chances of "giant hail" would become more frequent by the end of the century for Melbourne, Perth, Kalgoorlie, Sydney and Canberra. The "future" scenario assumes a warming of about 2.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in 2080–2100, which the researchers say is within the range of projections for our current emissions pathway. In Melbourne, the likelihood of 10cm hailstones hitting the city would increase from once every 20 years to once every three years, according to the study's findings. "In Melbourne, we saw that in the historical simulations, you might expect a 10cm hailstone, so that's like a pretty big hailstone, to occur once every 20 years in those simulations," the author of the research paper, Dr Tim Raupach, said. "But in the future scenario, that time reduces to every three years. Kalgoorlie saw similarly big increases in the frequency of giant hail — with 10cm hail recurring every six years in the future, compared to 18 years now. In Sydney and Canberra, giant hail already has a risk of happening once every three years, on average, but this goes to once every two years in the future scenario. In Perth, the chance of seeing giant hail with a diameter of 5cm increased from 14 per cent in any given year to 21 per cent, but the trends for 10cm hail were less clear. Giant hail has been shown to cause substantial damage to cities in the past, with some of Australia's most expensive insurance disasters coming from hailstorms. The Bureau of Meteorology issues warnings when hail is over 2cm in size. The simulations also predict the overall frequency of hailstorms will increase by nearly 30 per cent in Sydney and Canberra and 15 per cent in Brisbane — two areas already very prone to hail. "So those east coast cities — we saw increases in the frequency in the future simulations but in the other places we looked at, the changes were not significant, so no big changes there," Dr Raupach said. In Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and Canberra, it's not just how often the hailstorms and large hail come around that is increasing. The stones are also predicted to get bigger in general, with the biggest stones in any given storm in Melbourne predicted to increase by nearly a centimetre in diameter on average, according to the study. Hail is one of the most costly natural disasters, responsible for more than 20 per cent of insurance losses in Australia from 1967 to 2023. This includes the 1999 Sydney Hailstorm — Australia's most expensive natural disaster in insurance history — which saw an "avalanche" of cricket ball-sized hailstones blasting through roofs, windows and cars. The freak storm caused $1.7 billion in insured losses at the time, estimated at $8.85 billion if it were to happen today. Perth residents also remember the 2010 hailstorm, which left the city in tatters and led to over $1 billion in insurance claims. There are still cars on the road today bearing golf-ball-sized dents. Dr Raupach said Australia's booming rooftop solar installations could make our cities and towns even more vulnerable to cost blow-outs now. "Hail can damage solar panels. We've seen it happen — in Brisbane in 2020 and in the US as well," he said. Given the hefty price tag of these events, Dr Raupach said it was something Australia needed to consider, noting hail was not in the building regulations. "This was a study looking at the end of the century," he said. "If climate change is making hailstones larger, then first of all, we should reduce emissions so that we kind of tamp down the effects of climate change. Despite the study's findings, Dr Raupach described the impact of climate change on hail as still being "uncertain", noting this was only one study. He said further studies were also needed on wind speeds, which could act to make the damage of hailstorms far worse by blowing the stones sideways into windows. One of the main reasons for hail getting larger is the warming of the atmosphere, according to Dr Raupach. With every degree the atmosphere warms, it can hold 7 per cent more moisture. This extra moisture acts as "fuel" for a storm when the right weather system comes along, meaning it has the potential to be more powerful and create larger hail. But Dr Raupach said other "dynamical" parts of weather made the situation more complicated from place to place. "The ingredients you need for a hailstorm [are] instability in the atmosphere and you need the wind to be changing with height, that's called wind shear, and you need plenty of moisture," he said. "Let's take Brisbane as an example. There, we see an increase in the instability but we see a decrease in the wind shear, and that seems to have an offsetting effect … that might explain why we're not seeing these changes in hailstone size in Brisbane. "But in Melbourne, for example, we're seeing increases in both of those ingredients, and so it makes sense that we're seeing changes in the hail size there." Adelaide did not show any significant trends in either frequency or hail size. Hobart and Darwin were not included in the study because they "don't get hail as often", according Dr Raupach.
The Australian
a day ago
- The Australian
Bordertown abandoned, Gawler rescheduled following rainfall
Significant rainfall across South Australia has forced Racing SA to abandon last Friday's Bordertown meeting, while a postponed Gawler meeting will be held on Sunday. A decision was made on Thursday to postpone Friday's eight-race card at Bordertown due to the state of the track, in conjunction with a bleak weather forecast ahead. • PUNT LIKE A PRO: Become a Racenet iQ member and get expert tips – with fully transparent return on investment statistics – from Racenet's team of professional punters at our Pro Tips section. SUBSCRIBE NOW! Racing SA had hoped to reschedule the meeting but announced on Monday afternoon that the eight-race card had been abandoned, with no alternate options available in the South East ahead of a scheduled Mount Gambier meeting on Friday, August 8. The postponed Gawler meeting will be held on Sunday (August 3) with minor program changes, two Maiden Plates (2YO & Over, 1200m) have been combined for a Maiden Plate (3YO & Over, 1200m). • Quartet hands Milnes Lightning and premiership A Class One Handicap (1200m) has also been added to the seven-race program. Nominations for the meeting will close at 12pm (ACST) on Tuesday (July 29). Bordertown's abandoned card will be divided at Mount Gambier on August 8. The next scheduled race meeting in SA is an eight-race card at Balaklava on Wednesday. Read related topics: Adelaide
