The 2022 Melbourne Cup will jump at 3 pm today, on one of those four-seasons-in-a-day type days in Melbourne, and while it has been clear at the track since early this morning, that likely won't last.

A strong cold front moved through Victoria overnight. In its wake, showery weather has set in across the state. It is also snowing in the Victorian Alps and the Snowy Mountains of southern NSW, as predicted.

As for Melbourne, the city only saw 3 mm of rain to 9 am today, in a 24-hour period when much higher totals were recorded in other parts of the state. As these images show, it was pretty clear at Flemington around 10am.

#MelbourneCup Day at Flemington. I think we'll see the typical four seasons in a day weather. Bring on the big race! #HorseRacing pic.twitter.com/2aCE44Ih8O

— Grant Courtney (@paomaphotos) October 31, 2022

But that is set to change. Take a look at this satellite loop from this morning. It shows a cold, unstable speckled cloudmass impacting southern SA and western Vic.

Weatherzone meteorologist James Rout says that winds will turn from northwesterlies to southwesterlies around 2pm in the Melbourne area.

"This will make it feel much colder, and cloud will increase then too, with showers and possibly storms most likely between 2pm and 5pm. Since the rain will fall in showers there's a chance that showers miss Flemington."

So racegoers might get lucky. There's a chance that the worst of the weather could miss Flemington. But there's also a good chance it'll be a Melbourne Cup staged in driving rain and possibly even small hail, with temps not much higher than 10°C as the race jumps, and an apparent temp (feels-like temp) that's much colder still.

It pretty much all depends whether one of those speckle clouds decides to park itself over the racecourse at 3 pm this afternoon. In weather, as in horse racing, the minutiae is much harder to predict than the big picture.

Best of luck on all fronts.