Weather News

Severe weather lashing WA

Ben Domensino, Wednesday August 1, 2018 - 10:31 AEST

A strong cold front is causing severe weather in Western Australia today, prompting alerts for dangerous wind, damaging surf and flooding.

The cold front was passing over southwestern parts of the state this morning and will push further east during the rest of Wednesday, reaching the SA border early on Thursday morning. Damaging winds, showers and thunderstorms are all likely near the front as it passes through.

The strongest winds as of 8am WST on Wednesday were 113km/h at Cape Leeuwin, 100km/h at Cape Naturaliste and 91km/h at Busselton Jetty.

A pool of cold air and a strong pressure gradient in the wake of the front will maintain squally winds, showers and thunderstorms across the state's South West Land Division for the rest of Wednesday. This strong onshore flow of wind will also produce large and dangerous surf that may cause coastal erosion in some areas.

The cold air mass behind the front is likely to see hail falling in some southwestern parts of the state today, with a few flurries of snow even possible on the Stirling Ranges on Wednesday night.

While rainfall from this system won't be anything unusual for this time of year, it will be falling into saturated catchments and may trigger localised flooding. A flood watch has been issued for the state's Lower West and South West Districts, where flooding is possible on Wednesday.

Visit http://www.weatherzone.com.au/warnings.jsp for the latest warnings.

- Weatherzone

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