A powerful front is generating what ABC meteorologist Tom Saunders calls a "smorgasbord" of wild weather across eastern Australia this weekend — and Queensland's serving is heat. Southern Queensland's temperatures will peak in the mid 30s, with a slight risk of early-September records, before cooler air from the south arrives on Sunday night.
The one mercy: a lack of strong winds should keep fire danger across south-east Queensland below "extreme" — a sharper contrast than it sounds, given Greater Sydney is predicted to see its first extreme fire danger day of the season along with a total fire ban.
A hot night for half a million people
The timing lands squarely on Brisbane's biggest night of the year. Up to half a million people are expected along the river for Riverfire on Saturday night, where the forecast is hot and sunny with a top of 32 degrees and the fireworks begin at 7pm. Worth remembering from the event rules: water in unsealed bottles isn't allowed into the gated South Bank precinct, but empty bottles are — and they can be filled on site.
Records tumbling down the coast
The early-season heat is not a Queensland quirk. After what the ABC has previously reported as record winter warmth and record-low alpine snow, the start of spring has brought record warmth too. Sydney's maximums through the first five days of September are on track to match the city's midsummer average of 26.4 degrees Celsius — warmer than any other start to spring since the Observatory Hill station opened in the 1850s. Most Sydney suburbs are tipped to hit 32C or 33C, as much as 13 degrees above the September average, challenging the first-week-of-spring record of 31.1C set in 2013.
Further south the same front is delivering the rest of the menu: peak gusts of around 100 kilometres per hour along stretches of the southern coast and ranges — strong enough to bring down tree branches and power lines — gusty thunderstorms across parts of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria, and a flood watch across 10 catchments, with the Bureau of Meteorology warning of possible isolated moderate flooding in north-east Victoria. Behind the front, colder Southern Ocean air will even dust the higher Alps with snow — too little, too late for an alpine region whose natural cover is the worst on record for early spring.
For south-east Queensland, the whole show moves through quickly: the wild weather eases across south-east Australia on Sunday as the front heads into the Tasman Sea, and the cool change reaches Queensland by Sunday night. Until then, the Bureau of Meteorology's Queensland page has the current forecasts and any warnings — and Riverfire's crowds would do well to pack the sunscreen and an empty bottle.