Latest weather news articles and updates

Finally! There are lots of features aligning to make a proper alpine snow event occur early next week. For much of this year we have had a ridge of high pressure sitting over southeastern Australia. This has blocked weather systems from moving through, limiting rain. We've had many rain systems develop over the eastern states, mainly in Queensland and NSW, and sometimes they've been able to brush eastern Victoria - but anything coming from the west hasn't been as successful in delivering wet weather thanks to that blocking high.

For the drought affected areas of the southeast there is a bit of rain on the horizon, with a system due early next week. Most areas near the coast or south/west of the ranges have the potential for 10 to 25 mm. Some parts of northern and western Tasmania may see up to 50mm with heavier falls at elevation. This is better than we’ve seen recently, but still not drought breaking - and as it will come through in showers (which are by nature hit and miss) there will be places that miss out and only see a few millimetres.

It is a sharp contrast between the frost southeast, and the wet NSW coast. We have a combination of: slow moving high pressure, an upper atmosphere cold pool of air, and an incredibly warmer than average Tasman Sea - working together to push rain into the coast with significant totals expected over the next few days.

Southeastern Australia has woken to a widespread frost event this morning, setting new records in some sites. The coldest temperature appears to be -8.0C in Fingal in Tasmania.

The weather pattern over southeastern Australia, southwestern Australia and the East Coast, could not be more different over the next week .Keep thinking of this simple equation while I walk you through the weather pattern: in order to make it rain you need instability and moisture to work together.

This morning's snow forecast has quickly changed from a sad looking chart, to something with a lot more zeal. Some alpine resorts have a forecast of 80cm of snow over the next ten days! Hold on... before you get too excited, let's look under the hood to see what is driving that forecast.