Western Australia cyclone
© BOMA severe weather warning has been issued for the Kimberley region of Western Australia with a tropical low (pictured) expected to form into a cyclone off the north coast on Thursday
A dose of wild, wintry weather has struck WA's south-west as it brims with holidaymakers hoping to make the most of the region's idyllic beaches and campsites.

After a string of typical summer days in the region, a developing low pressure system is bringing a cool change, heavy rain and damaging winds, with gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour possible today.

"This weather is very unusual for this time of year," Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) senior forecaster Adam Conroy said.

"It's more typical of a strong winter storm, so it's pretty rare to get one of these systems developing in January.

"This sort of weather will be quite wintry and windy, so given that a lot of people would be out having their summer holidays it's important that they listen to the warnings."


A severe weather warning has been issued covering an area including Albany, Bunbury, Busselton, Katanning, Margaret River and Dunsborough.

"The risk is anywhere south-west of a line from Harvey across to Katanning and down to Bremer Bay," Mr Conroy said.

"The worst of the winds should start to develop around the south-west capes early on Wednesday morning ... so the worst of the weather will happen during the morning and afternoon [on Wednesday].

BOM figures show wind gusts at Cape Naturaliste reached 104kph at 9:00am, and 87kph at Busselton Jetty around 9:10am.

The low pressure system is also delivering record rainfall in some areas.

A new January daily rainfall record of 57mm has been set in Cape Leeuwin, where the previous record of 54.9mm was set in 2017.

Witchcliffe received 41.4mm, a significant increase on the previous January record of 27.8mm in 2007.

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