Australia: This Cold Blast Will Be Strong...

[00:00:00][music] >> Good day, guys. It's Josh here from Cyclones Oz, and this is your detailed Australian weather forecast update for the 24th of July, 2026. Actually, it's the 23rd of July, 2026, but we do have some polar air, particularly down into the southeastern portions of the nation, which means it's going to be very cold this weekend, and we might have another round coming through next week, which could translate to a significant weather event across our eastern seaboard, but details are still quite murky there. I'm going to keep this video a bit shorter on sweater today. I'm a little bit under the weather today, so let's get stuck straight into the details right now.

[00:00:31]With that polar blast that's moving over Tasmania this morning, it's essentially just a really strong and persistent stint of southwesterly winds that's beginning to push over the western coast of Tassie right now. It's delivered some excellent snowfall portions of the west coast, and snow has fallen down to about 4 or 500 m, with that snow level expected to drop lower tonight and into tomorrow morning. However, as this weather system kind of backs off and weakens a little bit, that snow level uh whilst it does drop, it doesn't mean that heavy snowfall is expected to get down into the low levels. We'll continue to see a bit of shower activity here along the southern Victorian coastline.

[00:01:03]This could include Melbourne, but whatever activity occurs around Melbourne will be very patchy today, and will likely ease off into the late afternoon and evening hours.

[00:01:11]It'll be cold and windy, and probably a little bit wet and cold uh wet and snowy, rather, into the mountains of Victoria and New South Wales, but overall, mainland southeastern Australia is really not expecting much in the way of impacts from this weather system, apart from as mentioned, those gusty showers down here onto the southern Victorian coastline. High pressure is suppressing all of that, you know, kind of shower activity and thunderstorm activity that's currently occurring down around Tasmania, and as high pressure begins to pull in from the west throughout the course of today, we're going to see the weather systems here really suppressed out of southeastern Australia, but snowy, cold, wet, miserable for the western coast of Tassie. Nothing that they're not used to at this time of the year, but it will be, you know, that severe weather type conditions and hazardous uh uh conditions outside, so please do keep that in mind. Um and then, as mentioned, getting very cold as we move into towards this week, and we've got a very strong pool of upper air that's um you know, a lot colder than we'd normally see even for this time of the year moving over the southeast of the nation.

[00:02:03]We're expecting that to really cool things down through Friday morning and then especially towards Saturday morning and Sunday morning for New South Wales and Queensland. You can see a big swathe here of these blue colorings which indicates temperatures below about 3 or 4° C and then a bit of white here eking into the alpine areas of New South Wales and into the mountainous areas of northeastern New South Wales. That's our negative temperatures beginning to extend across these areas. So, a frosty cold start expected tomorrow and then a very frosty and very cold start expected on both Saturday and Sunday. And in fact, that cold air begins to pull further up towards the north which means it'll really be Queensland's turn to feel the cold air on Sunday morning.

[00:02:40]We'll likely see a bit of this cold air push into the Brisbane metro area as well. It'll mean frost as opposed to the serious fog that we're seeing this morning. In fact, we might be able to see that on the satellite imagery. Not quite, but we are looking at some pretty significant Well, actually no, we can see it on the satellite imagery. A lot of fog here through the Brisbane and southeastern corners of Queensland, but this will turn into towards frost as we push into towards this weekend and with those temperatures dropping significantly. It'll overall though be rather fine. I mean, high pressure's influence typically does mean those finer, calmer, and more collected weather days. So, less shower activity, less of those really strong winds we've grown to hate across southeastern Queensland and the New South Wales coastline in recent weeks and months.

[00:03:18]And it looks like overall pleasant weather will begin to build in towards this weekend bar a couple of showers and a few passing clouds here and there particularly for those that are right up against the coastline, not necessarily inland like the Brisbane suburbs and Brisbane city area is.

[00:03:32]Further north, we do have a little bit of tropical activity here beginning to push up into towards far northern Queensland. This is expected to be the trend throughout the course of the week.

[00:03:39]So, a few showers moving through here thanks to a southeasterly trade flow and a trough that's protruding out into the Coral Sea. They'll be at their heaviest today before easing off tomorrow and then rebuilding again on Saturday and especially into towards Sunday. Shower activity isn't expected to amount to any significant rainfall accumulations and the rest of northern Australia remaining dry, calm and collected as you would expect it for this time of the year.

[00:04:00]And then as we push in towards this weekend and then later on through this weekend and into early next week, high pressure really does become the dominant force across the actual southeast of the nation, so Victoria and New South Wales, before a weak low pressure system is allowed to push through towards the middle portions of the week here. This is on Tuesday. Now, we'd just like to say we want to take this with a bit of a pinch of salt. I said yesterday that the EC was the only forecast model supporting uh this return to wintry weather in this polar blast here behind that brief stint of high pressure on this weekend. That's now changed a little bit. We do have the GFS on board with it, the ICON forecast model and the ACCESS is also on board now with another polar blast coming through through Monday and Tuesday, um which is good to see. We definitely need the rainfall and again a lot of people asking, "Where is winter?" We haven't really been rocked into winter here across southeastern mainland Australia, so this will be good to see here come through. It will mean areas of rainfall, snowfall and strong winds through Tuesday and into Wednesday with the passage of this cold front, but it also means likely that we're going to see another very strong cold air mass being pushed through here with this winter system. And you can actually see here 850 hPa temperatures, which is our 1,500 m off the off sea level. You can see here pushing up towards minus six, minus seven here as they peak in towards southeastern Australia. So, this will create a very hospitable environment for snowfall across alpine Victoria and alpine New South Wales. And it'll also likely allow for some snowfall to run up a little bit further up New South Wales and maybe even into the northern tablelands if some of these forecast models are to be believed. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is a bit of a wildcard here for New South Wales and it's definitely something I want you to be paying close attention to if you are on the eastern seaboard of New South Wales. Right now, there's a few question marks as to what's actually going to happen, but major forecast models are in strong agreement that a large area of low pressure with the potential for widespread significant snowfall, damaging wind gusts, and maybe some moderate to heavy rainfall will extend across the New South Wales coast and into the Great Dividing Range. Now, this is likely being over-initialized by the forecast models. We've seen it time and time again, these medium-range storm systems being, you know, blown out of proportion and significantly stronger than what the what they ultimately end up to be. So, take this one with a pinch of salt and treat this as likely the worst-case scenario. But, definitely a few caveats here with this amount of forecast model support something could very well get going here. It's favored based off the short-range elements into the forecast.

[00:06:21]We can already see that storm beginning to develop now. That's going to push into this region in about a week's time.

[00:06:26]And now that we also have, you know, very warm waters here offshore from New South Wales, it's not actually hard to believe that a significant amount of snowfall and rainfall would be possible here if we do get an appropriate amount of cold air being slung over New South Wales and Victoria.

[00:06:39]So, bottom line, I would say we're expecting another polar blast here across Alpine New South Wales and Victoria, which means temperatures will get cold and there will be snow and rainfall down here into the south southern portions of this map. And now there is that wildcard for the potential for winter weather extending right up towards the New South Wales-Queensland border, which might include snowfall for the northern tablelands towards the end of next week. A big wildcard and a big question mark right now, but it is being supported on the forecast models. So, definitely something we're going to have to watch now in the coming couple of days across the eastern seaboard of New South Wales. Not saying it will happen, just saying that it is now a feature on our forecast models and something that has, you know, piqued my interest. Now, Western Australia is a bit of a different story. We've got a very, very strong ridge of high pressure here, a 1040 high. I believe this is the third time that we've seen a 1040 high in the month of July this year, and probably only the 10th time in Australian history. They're they're really quite rare at this magnitude here through the month of July, particularly towards late July. They're very much favored through May and early June, but these very strong amplitude high pressure ridges are a sure fire sign of El Niño at work here across southern Australia and of course it is doing wonders at suppressing rainfall and uh weather conditions down here across southeast uh southwestern WA.

[00:07:50]This of course means fine, calm, pleasant weather, cold mornings, fine, beautiful days, and that's expected to be the trend through today and tomorrow.

[00:07:57]And then as you can see pulling out towards this weekend, high pressure begins to push off towards the east.

[00:08:02]This will allow a low pressure system here offshore from southwestern WA to begin pushing into the southwest of uh the state. You can see it begins collecting the southwestern coast here through Sunday morning. It's been delayed a couple of hours here on the forecast models which to me is a bit of a sign of this system getting a little bit weaker. Uh it definitely does look like it will bring, you know, a little bit of rainfall to portions of the southwest coast and that could include the Perth metro area as well as places like Bunbury, Albany, and Esperance through Sunday, uh likely arriving at the Perth metro area through Sunday afternoon now as opposed to Sunday morning which was the expectation yesterday. And then high pressure very quick to move in throughout the start of next week. So, a wet weekend followed by a fine week. That's the picture that we're very used to at this point in time across southwestern WA. Another cold front begins to push in here towards the end of the forecast period. This is that system that we're talking about the last couple of days here about that very large, high-riding low pressure system.

[00:08:53]That has since been canceled and replaced with a much more typical, quintessential low pressure system down here, pretty weak in nature all things considered as well. There won't be much rainfall in this and to be honest it's not really going to feel like winter either by the looks of things, but it will still likely rain towards the end of the month of July likely in the last couple of days, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. And then a bit of a wild card into the long range. The models are still calling for that very weird, high-riding storm, just delayed it a week here as we push in towards the end of the first week of August. But again, that is something to be taken with a very heavy pinch of salt. You can see here the GFS is going to town. A 943 hPa system here on about the latitude of or just towards the south of Tasmania.

[00:09:34]That would be a very, very significant low pressure system and a very significant storm event for southwestern WA and in all likelihood probably not going to happen either. So, forecast models are definitely, you know, umming and arring a little bit.

[00:09:47]They're hopping around there, you know, quite, you know, hard to use right now.

[00:09:50]So, we definitely need to keep that in mind and it does look like whilst we will see some rainfall this weekend across southwestern WA, going any further beyond that is really much a really very much a roll of the dice. So, we'll keep an eye on the situation here, but for southwestern WA, don't be getting your hopes up for rainfall yet at this point in time because there's not much throughout the remainder of July and it's impossible to say how much is going to fall in the first week of August just with how inconsistent and incongruent these uh weather models are with the frontal activity and the nature of this storm event coming through. That will do it for me today, though. I do hope you've enjoyed the forecast update or found it informative and preferably both. And if you have, then please you can consider leaving a like and also subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. I really do appreciate all of the support and I hope to see all better tomorrow or wrapped and ready for tomorrow's forecast update as we head into this weekend. I'll take it easy today and I'll catch you on the next storm.

[00:10:38]Goodbye.