Anyone with outdoor plans over the next few days is being urged to consider rescheduling, with the Gold Coast set to be battered by some pretty wild weather.
A tropical trough is currently lying along the north Queensland coast, with a low-pressure system developing within it off the central coast.
The low is expected to strengthen further as it moves to the southeast on Thursday, continuing southeastwards well off the southeast coast during Friday.
It’s expected to bring with it gale-force winds, rain, and massive swell over the next few days.
Steven Hadley from the Bureau of Meteorology has told myGC there’s even a chance temperature records could be broken.
A top of just 21 degrees is predicted for the Gold Coast on Thursday, which also coincides with the first day of December.
“It is well below average, and for some areas, it is close to record-breaking for the 1st of December,” Mr Hadley said.
“The record for Coolangatta is 19.5C and you have to go back to 1986 to see something that low.
“If it doesn’t reach 22C on Thursday, 21.8C was the last we saw that cold on December 12, 2020”.
He said Thursday will likely be the wettest day for the coast, with 25 millimetres of rain forecast to fall across the city.
“Over the next few days we’ve got a really good chance of rain, looking at higher totals on Thursday,” Hadley said.
“Some places over higher ground could reach more than 25mm, places like Springbrook and Mount Tamborine.”
While storms aren’t expected, the weather bureau isn’t ruling them out completely.
“It’s a little bit different to our normal set up for this time of year, because most of our storms are going to be over central Queensland near a trough,” Hadley said.
“But there is an upper system moving through and that’s going to carry the cloud cover from that trough a long way south over parts of South East Queensland, so just really grey skies.”
A strong wind warning is in place for Gold Coast Waters today, with a gale wind warning in place tomorrow, forcing authorities to remove sharks nets from all Gold Coast beaches.
RELATED: Shark nets pulled from Gold Coast beaches ahead of wild weather
“There’s going to be quite rough seas around over the next few days, those gale force winds are going to mix up the seas quite well,” Hadley said.
“The swell is likely to get up to around four metres and potentially a little bit over that in some parts of the Gold Coast over the next couple of days”.
“So to sum it up – it’s going to be rainy, windy, cold, peaking on Thursday, and then at least warming up a little bit… with those big swells as well”.
