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Showers and thunderstorms, some intense, extend over WA, the northern NT and parts of QLD in humid and unstable air. Heavy rain over the QLD central coast in humid, easterly winds. A high pressure cell keeps the country's interior, south, and southeast mostly dry and settled.
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Today, 2:16AM UTC
Heavy rain to soak Queensland's central coast on Thursday
A brief burst of heavy rain is likely to cause flash flooding along Queensland’s central coast and adjacent inland on Thursday. A coastal trough being fed by a deep layer of moisture-laden winds coming off the Coral Sea will cause heavy rain over Qld’s central coast and adjacent inland on Wednesday night into Thursday. There also signs that a small low pressure system could form near the coast, which would further enhance rainfall in the region if it forms. The rain from this system is expected to be brief but intense, likely brining 100 to 200 mm between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday night, with isolated falls possibly exceeding 300 mm. If this much rain does fall, it would easily be enough to cause localised flash flooding. Image: Forecast accumulated rain over central Qld during the 48 hours ending at 10pm AEST on Thursday, November 21, 2024. It's worth pointing out that there is some uncertainty regarding this event. It’s clear that a period of heavy rain will develop during Wednesday night and on Thursday. However, it’s uncertain exactly where and how much rain will fall, so be sure to keep up to date with the latest forecasts and warnings during the next 48 hours. In addition to the rain that’s about to soak Qld’s central coast, areas of rain and thunderstorms will also impact other parts of the state on Wednesday and Thursday. Image: Forecast accumulated rain over Qld during the 48 hours ending at 10pm AEST on Thursday, November 21, 2024. This wet and stormy weather is being fuelled by persistent moisture-laden air coming from the Coral Sea, where sea surface temperatures in some areas are running around 1°C warmer than average for this time of year. This extra warmth is enhancing evaporation and pumping more moisture into the atmosphere. Image: Sea surface temperature anomalies in the Coral Sea on November 17, 2024. Source: Bureau of Meteorology Rain should ease over central Qld on Friday, although showers and some thunderstorms will continue over the state’s north and east into the weekend. Headline image credit: iStock / Smyk_
Today, 12:18AM UTC
Storm-producing juggernaut drenching the west
If you asked a young child to colour-in a map of Western Australia with crayons, you might get something that looks a lot like the three-day projected rainfall map for this week. Rain, and plenty of it, is set to soak virtually the entire state. And while some places will inevitably only see a few drops or miss out entirely, plenty of areas will see good falls. Image: Three-day accumulated rainfall totals in WA to 8pm Friday, November 22, according to the ECMWF model. That includes arid areas in the centre and east of the state which are dry at the best of times, and southern areas where rainfall tends to dry up at this time of year. This event has already well and truly kicked off, with solid falls recorded on Tuesday into Wednesday morning across the Kimberley, Gascoyne, Pilbara, Goldfields, Central West, Lower West, South West, Great Southern and Central Wheat Belt forecast districts. Some of the rain has fallen briefly in heavy bursts during storms, while in some places it has accumulated steadily. Totals of note from 9 am Tuesday to 7:30 am Wednesday (AWST) include: 50mm or more at multiple locations in the South West forecast district, including Shannon and Bridgetown. 40mm at Golden Grove, a copper, lead, silver, zinc and gold mine in arid country about 250km east of Geraldton in the Gascoyne forecast district. 29.4mm at Kalgoorlie, the heaviest day of November rainfall in five years for WA's largest inland city. 28.2mm at Morawa Airport in the Central West, and bear in mind that the site’s average rainfall for the whole of November is just 10.6mm. 18.4mm at Dalwallinu in the Central Wheatbelt, where the average for the whole of November is just 13.4mm. 17.2mm at Marble Bar, the heaviest daily fall since June this year. Image: The 7am combined radar and satellite image revealed cloud over a broad area of WA with rain and storms heaviest over inland parts of the state’s western half. As the image above shows, there's cloud but not much rain on the Perth radar this morning, although 3.8mm did accumulate in the city’s main gauge from Tuesday afternoon into Tuesday evening, with slightly higher totals in many suburbs. While Perth daily totals will likely remain below 10mm this week before the weather clears in time for the first cricket Test between Australia and India starting on Friday, there's plenty of potential for further solid falls elsewhere in WA. What's causing this rain? The broad low pressure trough which is currently causing the rain and storms will be bolstered by an upper-level trough passing over the state during the next few days. The arrival of that upper trough will destabilise the atmosphere and cause the surface trough (and associated rain and storms) to spread east – hence the coloured-in effect across the state on the map at the top of this story. We’ll keep you posted on notable rainfall totals in Western Australia in coming days.
19 Nov 2024, 3:21AM UTC
Satellite spots von Kármán vortices over East China Sea
A rare snake-like cloud formation caused by a phenomenon called von Kármán vortices has been spotted near Japan this week. The satellite image below shows the unusual clouds snaking to the south of the Korean Peninsula on Monday, extending over the East China Sea between Japan and China. Image: von Kármán vortices south of South Korea’s Jeju Island on Monday, November 18, 2024. Source: CIRA/RAMMB and Himawari-9 von Kármán vortices, also known as von Kármán vortex streets, are caused by a repeating pattern of swirling vortices that occur when air at the cloud level is forced to flow around an island or mountain. von Kármán vortices have been known to occur in many different parts of the world, including the Canary Islands near the northwest coast of Africa, Guadalupe Island off Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula and the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile. Image: von Kármán vortices flowing off Guadalupe Island on July 2019. Source: NASA Worldview One common feature about the islands that frequently create von Kármán vortices is their height. Small islands with high mountains, typically volcanoes, are ideal candidates for producing von Kármán vortex streets. The peak of South Korea’s Jeju Island, which produced Monday’s stunning vortices, sits just under 2,000 metres above sea level. This is only a couple of hundred metres below Australia’s highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko. Video: von Kármán vortices on Monday, November 18, 2024. von Kármán vortices are named after Theodore von Kármán, who was a co-founder of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the first scientists to describe this atmospheric phenomenon. His name is also used for the Kármán line, which is one of the conventional human-defined thresholds between Earth’s atmosphere and space.