A line of thunderstorms is moving across the entire Sydney basin and nearby areas on Monday morning, with strong squalls, heavy rain and a rapid drop in temperatures.
Sydney started Monday with its warmest morning of summer 2022 to date by a large margin.
- The city reached 29.6°C just before 10 am.
- Temps topped 32°C in numerous areas between 9 and 10 am, from Sydney Airport to Penrith.
Indeed, as the live temp map captured earlier on Monday morning shows, Sydney was the hottest place in the whole of southeastern Australia.
But around 10 am, the first storms started moving in, as a trough and cold front pushed towards the east coast.
As you can see on the radar loop, the system moved pretty rapidly across New South Wales, and the storms are now moving just as quickly across the Sydney area as we write this story.
A whopping 21.6 mm of rain was recorded in just 14 minutes between 10:46 am and 11 am at Observatory Hill, while 95 km/h wind gusts were reported as storms ripped through.
Temps dropped to the low-20s or high-teens in most parts of the Sydney region after the first wave of storms passed.
Meanwhile this system delivered very heavy falls of rain on Sunday and overnight into Monday across parts of Victoria and New South Wales.
- The heaviest falls in New South Wales were in the Snowy Mountains region, where Perisher saw 74 mm to 9 am – just a few days after it plummeted to a record-equalling summer low temp of -7°C.
- Rain was recorded in every one of the Victorian forecast districts, which is quite unusual for a summer system. Again, the heaviest reading was in the mountains, with 42 mm at Mt Hotham.
The main focus of thunderstorm activity will shift to northeast NSW and southeast Queensland on Monday afternoon. Sydney can expect fine, mild weather from Tuesday through to Friday.
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