Melbourne may endure the coldest Easter Sunday in almost 80 years, while severe thunderstorms and rain are forecast for all eastern states on Good Friday.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s senior forecaster Miriam Bradbury said Melbourne’s coldest Easter Sunday was recorded in 1924 when the temperature peaked at 13.4C.
“We’re currently expecting a forecast maximum temperature of just 14C for Melbourne. So if we really struggle to reach that this Sunday, this may be a contender,” Bradbury said.
She said a strong cold front was moving across southern Australia, bringing an early dose of “wintery weather” and potentially severe thunderstorms to most capital cities.
“This includes Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle and Brisbane,” Bradbury said.
“For Tasmania, the risk of severe storms is most likely in the north-east but we could still see isolated, non-severe thunderstorm activity across a much broader area of the south-east.
“Destructive winds and giant hail are a small possibility about south-east Queensland including the Brisbane area through Friday afternoon and evening.”
Bradbury said the severe storms could also bring heavy rainfall, which would increase the risk of flash flooding and damaging winds that could bring down trees and power lines.
“It is really essential to just keep up with all the warnings on the Bureau of Meteorology’s warnings page, as we will likely see regularly updated warnings [on Friday],” she said.
The storm cells will gradually move offshore on Saturday and be replaced by much colder temperatures and showers.
“The coldest air will be moving through Saturday night going into Easter Sunday morning,” Bradbury said.
“That’s when we’ll see the lowest snow level, with snow possible above 700-800 metres through Tasmania on early Sunday and above 1,400-1,500 metres across alpine Victoria and southern New South Wales.
“We will see conditions gradually starting to ease late in the Easter weekend, but we will still see some showery weather, particularly for Tasmania and southern Victoria, with a chance of some small hail through the latter part of the weekend.”
Isolated showers and thunderstorms are forecast for parts of Western Australia on Friday, but Bradbury said these would ease into the weekend and move to the north, “leaving a pretty fine and mild day for Perth on Easter Sunday”.
“We’re also going to see the impacts of this cold front across parts of South Australia including the Adelaide area today going into tomorrow, but as this front moves east, the risk is going to start to ease,” Bradbury said on Thursday afternoon.
