Contrasting Conditions across Parts of Eastern Australia (credit: Higgins Storm Chasing)

DISCUSSION: Within the past 24 hours, there has been increasing water vapor transport occurring across a good portion of southeastern Australia.  As per the discussion included (courtesy of the Higgins Storm Chasing team), "Over the last 24 hours, the ski resorts have been subjected to warmer air and exceptional rainfall. While it wasn’t record breaking rainfall, the 146 mm at Perisher, 135 mm at Falls Creek (76 mm at the AWS was 4 mm shy of the record) and 128 mm at Thredbo have no doubt accelerated the snow melting process, as temperatures remained above freezing for the majority of the time the rain was falling.  Widespread rainfall totals of 50 mm+ fell over the remainder of the Snowy Mountains spread across far southeastern parts of southeastern Australia.  This rainfall was also accompanied by near-destructive winds with 120 km/hour recorded at Thredbo before the AWS stopped recording wind speeds.

Thus, it goes without saying that this upcoming winter blast will most definitely impact both ground and air travel across these parts of Australia.  Therefore, if you or someone you know is living across this portion of southeastern Australia, it is important to keep in touch with them and make sure that they remain safe and sound as this winter weather impacts day-to-day activities.  Depending on how long this winter weather persists across far southeastern Australia, the snowfall impacting these parts of southeastern Australia will more than likely continue at those areas located at higher elevations based on the fact that regional upslope forcing (i.e., persistent destabilization of the lower-to-middle parts of the troposphere) will help to sustain in-cloud snowfall-producing processes at those points of higher elevation.  To learn more about this Australian forecast scenario, click on the following link.

To learn more about other high-impact weather events occurring across the South Pacific Ocean and Australia, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz