VICTORIA: Trough then cold front. 3rd .. 6th Feb 2012

[Duckey]

Squally rain just started here and low and behold, rain delay at the cricket!

Edit: just heard a long, low rumble of thunder! Unexpected, thought it was going to be a fairly dry change with no storm action....

[aussiestormfreak]

The cool change has FINALLY arrived! And any minute now it'll start to bucket down, looks like there's an increasing risk of lightning out there too

Edit: a few drops of rain have begun to fall, still waiting for thunder...

[johnno]

No registable rain here yet even though looks fairly impressive on the radar I still stick with getting 1mm here. Nice and cooler though back to 21c here.

[Duckey]

Wow @ the radar right now.... ...seems to have developed seemingly out of nowhere. Now red cores right accross the eastern burbs. Very tropical, torrential rain here now in bursts...

[aussiestormfreak]

Some of those cells in the line entering the Dandenong Ranges and southeast suburbs look pretty intense, deep reds in a few of them, maybe hail or just very, VERY heavy rainfall?

[mick]

Some of those cells in the line entering the Dandenong Ranges and southeast suburbs look pretty intense, deep reds in a few of them, maybe hail or just very, VERY heavy rainfall?

Nah its the radar, when its really windy like this, it overestimates.

[Australis(Shell3155)]

that was a decent down pour, maybe 3.5mm. ??? didnt check amount before..
Pretty heavy and lasted a fair a nice amount of time..
glad that wind has stopped..

[droughtbreaker]

13C here now, it only got to around 25C anyway but still a pretty decent drop in temp. 0.7mm from about 2 minutes of moderately heavy rain. Another line is possibly going to move through, The rainfall intensity is decent from these showers but they are so fast moving and patchy that reasonable falls will be isolated.

[Anthony Violi]

What is extraordinary in all this is thats its 12.7 degrees at Ballarat in a WNW wind before the front arrives.

[johnno]

Off a side note latest 00z GFS going bananas for late week and next weekend. GFS was never really interested with this system with good falls

[MurrayRiver1712]

Just had a exciting minute of huge drops of rain falling, and that was it, still blowing up a storm here though.

[johnno]

Anthony the front went through mate its East of Melbourne

[droughtbreaker]

I always thought with this system that the important ingredient was thermal gradient. Most models picked a pretty steep drop in temps between the northerlies and westerlies. GFS for example has 22C 850T in far east Gippsland and just 6C on the far SW coast for 5pm. By 11am tomorrow morning most of western and central will be under 4C 850T.

A bit of thunder rumbling away atm.

[Anthony Violi]

That was the trough, front still back in western Victoria.

[HarleyB]

Wow, 37 degrees out at Orbost currently. Got to 30 here without a second of sun all day.

[droughtbreaker]

Off a side note latest 00z GFS going bananas for late week and next weekend. GFS was never really interested with this system with good falls

I'd divide by 3 at this stage, GFS going off on one of its adventures, EC is likely to have much less, however still looks good for 25-50mm over much of the state if it comes off.

Still very little rain from this system despite the fact it is fairly active. It's just so broken up and patchy, models were right on to this with most runs over the past few days going for 2-5mm max.

[nafets]

First rumbles of thunder here Although its not raining ATM

[Anthony Violi]

I think we are about to see our first flood event for the year Johnno.

[droughtbreaker]

That was the trough, front still back in western Victoria.

It's not going to get much colder, I think a minimum of 8C forecast for here overnight which is only a few degrees below average for Feb. 13C in Melbourne which is only about 1 degree below average.

It's all due to the deep low. SW winds are slinging cold air over SE South Aus and then this air is coming back over us from the WNW via the Grampians area. North of the Grampians conditions are still fairly warm because they are clear of most of the slinging effect of the low pressure system.

[Dane]

Temp has dropped from 32c just before 3pm and now its down to 17c.
Max wind gust accordong to my weather station was 36 knots at 2.56pm. Its still gusting up to 30 knots now.
Had a couple of heavy showers have not heard any thunder though, 4.5mm's so far.
Bar has risen from 991Hpa to 995 now. Interesting day.