Heavy rainfall and gale force winds are set to batter large parts of Queensland over the coming days with some areas facing the chance of getting a month's worth of rain on Thursday.
Parts of southern and central Queensland will bear the brunt of the wet weather, while coastal regions will be at risk of damaging surf conditions with massive swells expected.
Meteorologist Felim Hanniffy said scattered showers were forecast Wednesday before conditions worsen tomorrow and the risk of thunderstorm activity increases.
"We could broadly see falls of 10 to 30 millimetres through south-east Queensland with some local falls of 20 to 50 millimetres possible around parts of the northern Maranoa and Warrego regions and also southern parts of the Central Highlands," Mr Hanniffy said.
"July's rainfall averages anywhere from 20 to 30 millimetres, so some of these areas could easily see a month's worth of rain really over that 24-hour period during Thursday.
"It's all due to an upper-level system that's going to move into the far west of the state today and then progress eastwards during Thursday and Friday which is going to combine with a trough that's currently out over the Coral Sea.
"It's going to deepen that trough into quite a deep low-pressure system off the south-east coast as we go later in the week, particularly during Friday and Saturday, so quite an active period of weather to come across Queensland."
Strong winds, huge swells to hit coastal regions
Mr Hanniffy said winds of up to 90 kilometres per hour and swells of up to 5 metres are expected in south-east Queensland on Friday as the system moves offshore.
"We have extensive wind warnings for coastal waters and even a risk of offshore gales developing as that low moves south, particularly off the southern parts of the Capricornia waters and the south-east coast in general during Friday and for a time on Saturday," he said.
"It's a combination of this low-pressure system off the coast and the strong winds which is going to bring potential for hazardous surf conditions about the south-east coast from Friday and over the weekend and even a risk of some damaging surf conditions and significant wave heights as well."
Mr Hanniffy said the weekend would bring a reprieve from the severe conditions.
"On Saturday we'll have a drier south-westerly flow pushing up across the south-east, so a lot less in the way of cloud cover particularly around inland parts of the state," he said.
"We're probably still going to have showers lingering about some of the exposed coastal fringes of south-east around the border ranges.
"The winds are probably going to be a bit slower to ease, probably along the exposed coast you're going to have still quite a gusty southerly to south-westerly flow sticking around through much of Saturday."
