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Enhanced tropical moisture and an unstable air mass are causing showers and storms over north & west Qld & the Top End. An unstable air mass over southern WA is triggering showers & storms. A front moves up the NSW causing gusty S'ly winds and showers over Vic, Tas and SE NSW.
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Today, 2:32AM UTC
Frosty weekend for the southeast with widespread freezing temperatures
The coldest nights of 2026 to date await southeastern Australia this weekend, with temperatures falling to near or even below freezing across a wide area in the cool, dry airmass in the wake of a cold front. Saturday morning Thredbo Top Station in New South Wales will likely register the coldest temperature in Australia this weekend, with a low of -5°C expected on Saturday morning. The Victorian alpine resorts are all expecting minimums around -2°C or -3°C on Saturday morning. But it’s not just the usual suspects in the High Country that will shiver, with numerous locations right across Victoria likely to see lows of around 1°C or 2°C. Melbourne should go as low as 5°C on Saturday morning, which would be the coldest reading of the year by several degrees, with a chilly welcome of 3°C for those arriving early at the airport. Even South Australia should see frost in the southeast of the state with a minimum of 0°C forecast for Coonawarra. Image: Predicted minimums for SE Australia according to the ACCESS-G model for the morning of Saturday, April 18, 2026. Source: Weatherzone. Sunday morning The tiny town of Liawenee on Tasmania’s Central Plateau could be the coldest spot in the country on Sunday morning with a low of -4°C predicted. Omeo just east of the Victorian Alps can expect -2°C on Sunday morning. Canberra is set for its first sub-zero night of the year with -1°C forecast for Sunday morning, after the mercury got close on April 14 when the minimum was 0.1°C. The cold nights will reach all the way up to the Northern Tablelands of NSW by Sunday and Monday, with lows around 1°C or 2°C expected in places like Guyra and Glen Innes. Image: 48-Hour Graph for Omeo, Vic, on the Weatherzone app. What’s causing the frosty outbreak? As mentioned, a cool, dry stable airmass will settle in over the southeast after a cold front that roared through Tasmania and clipped the southern mainland on Thursday night into Friday morning. The combination of still night-time conditions and dry, cold air is always a healthy recipe for frosty mornings. The image below shows the forecast mean sea level pressure and precipitable water over Australia at 10pm (AEST) this Saturday night. Image: Mean sea level pressure and precipitable water according to the ECMWF model for 10pm AEST) on Saturday, April 18, 2026. Source: Weatherzone. As you can see, an area of high pressure and an associated dry airmass is centred over the southeastern corner of the mainland. To the east of the high, there’s still moisture associated with the low pressure system which will be centred over the Tasman Sea near New Zealand. A very light shower or two from this system could flick northern parts of the NSW coast. To the west of the high, the next cold front crosses South Australia, and while the blue-coloured band of atmospheric moisture looks impressive, only a few showers can be expected on Sunday in southeastern SA and southwest Vic before the weak front slides away to the southeast.
16 Apr 2026, 7:51AM UTC
148 km/h gust on kunanyi/Mt Wellington above Hobart
It’s a wild and woolly afternoon in Tasmania as a cold front approaches from the west, with winds gusting up to 148 km/h at 4:49pm on kunanyi/Mt Wellington above Hobart. That’s the equivalent of a gust you’d expect in a category 2 cyclone, where the range is between 125 km/h and 164 km/h. In Hobart itself, the peak afternoon gusts were only about half as strong, with a gust of 67 km/h in the city just after 2pm, and 70 km/h at the airport just before 5pm. Flights were still landing and taking off late on Thursday afternoon. Elsewhere in Tasmania, wind gusts exceeded 100 km/h at numerous exposed mountain or coastal locations, including the notoriously windswept Maatsuyker Island off the state’s southwest tip, where a gust registered 124 km/h just before 5pm. Why such wild winds in Tasmania this Thursday? An intense low pressure system is situated over waters well south of Tasmania, pushing a polar airmass northwards. The tell-tale sign of the cold air is evident in the speckled cloud pattern in the loop below. Image: Two-hour combined satellite and radar loop over Tasmania showing the fast-moving approaching cold airmass on the afternoon of Thursday, April 16, 2026. Source: Weatherzone. Meanwhile, much warmer air from the mainland is being dragged towards Tasmania in strong west to northwesterly winds, as air flows naturally from areas of high pressure to low pressure. The steep pressure gradient between the areas of high and low pressure creates what the BoM calls a "squeezing effect", where the rapid, forced lifting of warm air by dense, incoming cold air has a similar effect to water in a garden hose which has been squeezed. When will the winds die down? The cold air is due later this evening, with fresh snowfalls for Tasmania down to about 1000 metres. While snow showers will persist for a day or so on the highest peaks, snowfalls won’t be as heavy as last weekend’s unusually heavy autumn event. Nor will snow fall to such low levels. Winds are generally a little less gusty after the front has passed, although they will remain reasonably strong in exposed areas through Friday and into the weekend. However, it’s unlikely that the extreme winds of Thursday afternoon will be matched. Hobart is expecting a maximum of just 14°C on Friday after it reached 20°C on Thursday in the mild air ahead of the cold front. Only a light shower or two is likely on Friday.
16 Apr 2026, 1:30AM UTC
Darwin heading for hottest day of the year
Darwin is forecast to reach 36°C this Thursday, which would make it the hottest day of 2026 to date by well over a degree. Darwin’s hottest days to date in 2026 were April 1 and 2, both of which reached 34.5°C Darwin’s average April maximum (in records dating back to 1941) is 32.8°C. So today should be around three degrees warmer. Darwin’s April record is 36.7°C, set on this day in 2003. Why is Darwin hotter than usual this Thursday? The official Top End wet season runs from November to the end of April, but April is only a quarter as wet on average than Darwin’s rainiest month of January. Clear skies are much more common late in the wet season, and today’s sunshine will be accompanied by warm southeasterly winds. In the other Australian capital cities, southeasterlies generally mean relatively cool and/or showery conditions. But in the Top End, southeasterlies tend to bring warm, dry winds from the interior of the Northern Territory. Interestingly, inland NT towns like Katherine (approx. 300 km SE of Darwin, forecast Thursday maximum 36°C) and Tennant Creek (approx. 1000km SE of Darwin, forecast Thursday maximum 33°C) likely won’t be any hotter than Darwin this Thursday. Image: Forecast maximums for Thursday, April 16, 2026, according to the ACCESS-G model, showing the location of Tennant Creek and Katherine in relation to Darwin. Source: Weatherzone. It’s a bit like those occasional days when Sydney is as hot as towns in outback New South Wales when northwesterly winds funnel heat directly towards the low-lying Sydney basin. But it’s not dry everywhere in the NT this Thursday The remnants of ex-Tropical Cyclone Maila continue to affect parts of Queensland and are now also impacting Arnhem Land in the northeastern corner of the NT. The loop below shows moisture approaching the Arnhem Land coastline early on Thursday morning. Image: Four-hour combined radar and satellite loop over the Northern Territory to 10:30am on Thursday, April 16, 2026. (ACST) Source: Weatherzone. There’s quite a stark contrast in relative humidity across the Top End This Thursday, which you can see illustrated in the image below. Orange and yellow colours represent low humidity, with greens and blues indicating high humidity levels. The boundary between the two airmasses is called a dry line. Image: Relative humidity in the Top End on Thursday, April 16, 2026. Source: Weatherzone. A run of days with maximums closer to the April average of 32.8°C is expected in Darwin after this Thursday, with showers and storms increasingly likely as the moisture drifts westwards.