14/10/2010: Much of central and southeastern Australia is in for a few wild days - flooding rain, damaging winds and a cold wintry blast with low level snow, according to weatherzone.com.au.

"In the next day or two, 50 to 100 millimetres of rain will fall over a large area of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and central Australia, which will lead to flooding. Some will see more than 100mm," Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said.

Areas which had serious flooding only a month ago, such as northeastern Victoria and southern NSW are being targetted for flooding again, especially on Friday.

"For a large area the coming rain will be the biggest seen in more than six months and the biggest for October in five to 10 years. For some it will be the biggest October rain in more than 30 years," Dutschke said.

Even the last few days have brought decent rain with help from heavy thunderstorms. Wagga Wagga, Canberra and Uluru have already had their biggest October downpour in more than 30 years after gaining 80mm, 48mm and 50mm respectively since yesterday.

"The trough which caused the recent rain and storms has been playing with unseasonably high amounts of tropical moisture. This trough has now stalled and will deepen rapidly in the next 24 hours, causing massive downpours across a large area on Thursday night and Friday," Dutschke said.

These downpours will coincide with very strong and potentially damaging winds as a low develops. Generally, the strongest winds will arrive after the heaviest rain has fallen, a time when trees are most likely to topple.

"The strongest winds will also be the coldest, more typical of winter, when the wind chill is at its best."

"It will be cold enough for showers to contain small hail across the southeast and for snow to fall to about 500 metres in Tasmania, Victoria and southern NSW. On Friday night and Saturday morning there should be snow on Mt Macedon, Mt Dandenong, the Strathbogie Ranges and as far north as the NSW Central Tablelands," Dutschke said.

Over the weekend cold winds and will gradually ease and most showers will clear.

Media Inquiries:

Brett Dutschke
media@weatherzone.com.au
02 9965 9269

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