Western Australia's stormy cold front to cross the country
The past few days have brought the most widespread rainfall of the year so far to Australia, with rain in every state and territory and snow in alpine areas.
But a severe storm in WA has hit the state's south west and will crawl eastwards to bring more rainfall across the nation.
A warning was issued for WA as Perth was hit hard by lightning and hail.
There was also risk of flash flooding in the western capital.
Wilyabrup in the Margaret River region recorded 72mm of rain in just six hours overnight, while peak winds of 98km/h were experienced in Cape Naturaliste.
Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Angus Hines said the stormy cold front will cross the south of the country by Tuesday.
'We'll watch this band of rains start to sweep eastwards again into South Australia, once again back into New South Wales and southern parts of Queensland on Tuesday next week.
'So this is going to be a follow-up spell of wet weather across the parts of the country which have just had a band of wet weather.
'And for most places, this will be another welcome spell of rain.'
The country's east has already faced a weekend cold front as almost every capital city experienced downpours.
Dry parts of South Australia, Victoria and NSW welcomed wet weather, however it still has not caught up with rainfall deficiencies this year.
The upcoming band is not set to be as heavy as the weekend weather, but some areas will receive a 'top up' of up to 15mm.
Monday will be dry in the north of Australia under a high pressure system.
WA will still experience some showers, storms and strong winds.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

News.com.au
4 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
10 hours ago
- ABC News
WA's Stirling Range National Park enjoys three days of snow in just over a week
For West Australians who love chasing snow, there have been three opportunities in eight days to frolic in the white stuff at Bluff Knoll in Stirling Range National Park. Matilda Reddington made the challenging walk to the top of the peak with her sisters before school on Monday. "We woke up at 3am and left Bremer [Bay] and probably started the walk about 5 [am]," she said. It was her third hike to the top of Bluff Knoll in the snow. The most snow flurries ever recorded in WA in a single year was six in 2016, all on Bluff Knoll. There were five at the peak in 2021, and five in 1968 at different locations across the state. There were also reports of snow on Bluff Knoll on Monday and Thursday of last week. The chance to play in the snow at the top normally requires a pre-dawn hike before it melts, but last Thursday's conditions brought afternoon flurries. It also led to snow at Mt Toolbrunup, which at about 1,050 metres is the second-highest peak in the Stirling Ranges. Despite being only 50 metres lower than Bluff Knoll, snow is much less common on Mt Toolbrunup. Justin Taylor and a friend had planned to do the hike to the Mt Toolbrunup peak on Thursday anyway, and the snow was bonus. "It's fantastic." The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) does not have monitors at either site, but relies on reports from the hikers who make the trek. The last report to the BOM of snow at Mt Toolbrunup was in September 2017. No snow is forecast for Stirling Range National Park in the coming days, and warmer temperatures are expected. Last Thursday Katanning, about 125 kilometres south-east of Mt Toolbrunup, had its coldest day since records began there 27 years ago, according to the BOM. The temperature reached a maximum of just 8.5 degrees Celsius, breaking the previous record from 2017 of 8.6C. There was also hail on Thursday in parts of the state's South West. Some Margaret River locals took the opportunity to make hail men, a different take on the snowmen being attempted on Bluff Knoll. Perth recorded its coldest minimum in 15 years last Friday, when temperatures plummeted to 0.3C at about 7am. A new July minimum temperature record of 0.4C was also set in Windy Harbour that day, while Bridgetown recorded -1.5C and Collie -2.0C.

ABC News
10 hours 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.