A cold front is about to cross southern parts of Australia, including South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, bringing a risk of damaging winds and heavy rainfall to some parts over the next few days. I'm Angus here at the Bureau this is a severe weather update for the 29th of September.

First things first, what have we been looking at on this Monday morning so far? Well, our cold front sits in here amongst this spotty, patchy band of cloud which is approximately in line with the South Australia coastline as of late Monday morning, and it has been bringing some rainfall. So far the amount of rain over mainland Australia, it's pretty low, just single digit rainfall totals across the mainland. But as we get later on into the morning, we can see a few areas of heavier rain that are building off the coast or just on those southern coastlines and over Kangaroo Island. But for the day today, we don't actually expect that much rain to fall across Australia. That's what we have been seeing so far, but let's jump ahead to what we're likely to see as this weather system continues to move.

So our main cold front is this blue line here with the little triangle pips along it. That is the main weather system, and that is going to move onto South Australia later today. And that will slightly enhance the rainfall across the south east, maybe through Adelaide, with some wetter spells of weather coming in this afternoon. It will also push a few showers into western parts of Victoria and much of Tasmania too. But for these two states here, the main impacts with the system will arrive tomorrow.

So let's take a look now at Tuesday as to how that could unfold. This initial front continues to sweep eastwards across these states with rain and strong wind. But then there's a little bit of a fly in the ointment, and that's the development of this low pressure area here west of Tasmania. Now, this low here is going to do a couple of different things. Firstly, it's going to slow the progression, the movement of this whole weather system, prolong its impact and make that wet weather last for longer. Secondly, it's going to really complicate the wind flow around southern areas and it's going to mean we get winds kind of in all different directions around the compass, really making for some blustery conditions and some changeable weather impacts around southern parts.

So what do we anticipate being the most significant weather impact? Well, let's start off by looking at rainfall. And for these southern areas, we only really start to get concerned about significant impacts when we're forecasting perhaps more than about 50 mm of rain. And for most places, that's not going to occur. Victoria should all stay under 50 mm, most of South Australia under 50 mm, too, with the exception of this little stretch of red here on the limestone coast to the far south east could see some slightly heavier falls there.

The most significant accumulations of rain are going to be across Tasmania, the northwestern corner, the whole western flank and the south here could see between 50 and 80 mm in the coming few days. And this is a little bit more significant because it has been very wet in Tasmania in recent weeks. So even if we are going to get modest amounts of rainfall in the next few days, that will be falling onto saturated soil, and that means we could see those weather impacts really start to flare up, including the risk of riverine flooding. It is highly likely that a flood watch will get issued for northern Tasmania later today.

So if you live in those northern districts, particularly near any of those larger rivers, keep an eye on those flood watches to see if those rivers could swell up near your area. Extra rainfall can bring road closures, of course, and potentially a bit of disruption to utilities like water and plumbing.

So that's the rain. But what about the wind which is also coming with this weather system? Well, the strongest winds are actually expected in Victoria and we have gone ahead and issued a damaging wind warning that's here in yellow. So that covers the ranges through northern Gippsland and up into the north east of the state. Now through these areas here, the winds will be strongest on Tuesday starting early in the morning, going through until the afternoon. And over that time we could see wind gusts up to about 100 km an hour, which could bring down some trees, maybe cause a bit of damage to property, make it difficult to drive over those higher alpine passes, and potentially could cause a bit of disruption to the power network.

So if you'd like to keep in touch with what's going on with the weather across the south east this week, you can find the latest warning and forecast updates on our website and app. Thanks very much for watching.