Department of Health

The Cold Weather Alert System provides lead agencies and partners in homelessness an early notification of forecast cold weather conditions that may have negative health, safety and wellbeing impacts on people sleeping rough in the community.

The Department of Health and Human Services issues a cold weather alert when the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts cold weather conditions near, at or above the cold weather thresholds for a monitoring station in a particular weather forecast district.

For the 2017 winter pilot, cold weather thresholds may be triggered when forecasted cold conditions are predicted to exist for at least one day with:

  • the minimum daily temperature near, at or below the threshold for a monitoring station in the weather forecast district
  • and either daily rainfall is near, at or greater than 5 mm or daily top wind speed is near at, or greater than 30 km/h.

Cold weather alerts are likely to be issued no more than 3-4 days in advance of the event to provide an early notification to lead agencies and partners in homelessness to prepare and respond appropriately.

The Cold Weather Alert System and associated pilot cold weather thresholds were developed as part of the Responding to people who are sleeping rough in extreme weather policyExternal Link endorsed by the Minister for Housing, Disability and Ageing on 4 February 2017.

To sign up for the Cold Weather Alert System alerts, enter your email in the blue newsletter subscription box to the right or bottom of this page and select a Cold Weather Alert System region when you select the services you are subscribing to.

Reviewed 22 May 2017

Health.vic

Was this page helpful?