Tasmania is bracing for a weekend of extremely dangerous weather, with heavy rain and powerful winds set to lash virtually all parts of the state.
Unusually for a significant Tasmanian weather event, the state capital Hobart is directly in line for some of the most severe weather, with double the city’s average monthly rainfall likely over a 24-hour period.
You can see the areas expected to cop the most rain on the Weatherzone map below.
With most Tasmanian weather systems, the west coast of the state sees the heaviest rain.
Indeed you might be interested to know that western Tasmania is the wettest part of Australia that’s not in the tropics.
But this weekend, the heaviest rain will fall in the state’s south-east, as a low pressure system moves over the state, then out into the southern Tasman sea, directing moist easterlies across Tasmania.
Weatherzone’s synoptic chart for 11am Sunday morning shows the position of the low almost directly over Tasmania.
This is when the heaviest rain is expected to be falling, and when winds will likely be at their most dangerous, with gale warnings already in place for the weekend, and winds expected to reach up to 100 km/h on the west coast as winds swirl clockwise around the low
Southern Victoria will also see some chilly weather on Sunday, and while rain won’t be as heavy as in Tasmania, temperatures will still feel very wintry in Melbourne and nearby areas.
But the national weather focus for the weekend will definitely be on Tasmania, where heavy rain, storms, destructive winds, and potential flooding are all on the cards.
October is actually Hobart’s wettest month of the year, with 62.1mm of rainfall on average, so a decent drop at this time of year is hardly unexpected.
But if the BoM’s forecast is accurate, the city could exceed that total in the period between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.
