WEATHER UPDATE: POWERFUL STORM FRONT CROSSING THE COAST

A powerful storm front is currently crossing the coast.

It is going to move through the Greater Hunter this evening, and continue its path north along the mid north coast, northern rivers and south east Queensland overnight and into tomorrow.

It’s packing some powerful wind gusts with consistent gusts of beyond 100km per hour along the exposed coastal fringe.

There is a heavy rain band associated with this system, with cold air as well, so we’ll probably see some snow across the higher peaks of The Barringtons and also over the Tablelands around Guyra and Armidale.

The system is a complex low, named that because it has multiple centres, one of those centres is going to run right along the coastal fringe overnight and that is what makes this system particularly dangerous.

It is also going to coincide with a king high tide due to last night’s full moon, that’s at about 9pm, so we are going to see a storm surge around the Central Coast and the low lying area of the Greater Hunter as that system moves through and because the weight of the atmosphere will be quite low there are powerful onshore winds.

We might see the highest water marks on record, with a chance of breaking the 1974 record.

The swell is going to change dramatically overnight. South of Port Macquarie we are expecting swell to hit 7 metres.

It’s an amazing, powerful system. It’ll move through with that initial blast which will be particularly dangerous, probably causing some down trees and powerlines and maybe some black outs as well.