Australia Weather News

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. The past few days have seen Tasmania and southern Victoria transformed into chocolate box-worthy winter wonderlands.

The icy blast has brought absurdly cold conditions, with snow down to levels not seen for a decade in some places and very nearly a century for others.

But over the next few days, attention will turn to rain for New South Wales, southern Queensland and northern Victoria, with potentially heavy falls for the NSW South Coast as yet another low pressure system threatens the east coast.

Blair Trewin, senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and general weather record guru, had to dig back through the archives to find the last time Launceston had snow like this.

Dr Trewin reckons the last time Launceston saw a "comparable event" was back in 1921.

Sure enough on August 1, 1921, The Examiner newspaper reported the town's heaviest snowfall in more than 25 years.

Meanwhile, The Mercury reported the snow "was the cause of considerable excitement, especially among the children, many of whom had never before seen snow falling".

"They quickly acquired the art of snowballing and made targets of unwary pedestrians."

Dr Trewin said it was rare for Launceston to get snow, because snow-inducing weather was usually the result of cold fronts that swept in from the south-west, and the city was protected by the mountains, in a "snow shadow" of sorts.

This time, however, things were different.

Because this event was the result of a low pressure system, the wind came from the south-east and, with no mountains in the way, Dr Trewin said Launceston got snow all the way down to sea level.

Lowest snow around Melbourne in years

But "Launnie" was not the only place to get unusual white stuff.

Dr Trewin said for various areas around Melbourne, it was probably the most significant low-level snow event in at least a decade.

"We had snow down to 300 metres, in the Sunbury area and also in the Dandenongs," he said.

"There were very localised reports of snow in some of the southern bayside suburbs during a heavy shower in the evening."

He said it did not look like any major minimum temperature records had been broken, but there had been a few impressive numbers about.

"Melbourne was only 4.9 degrees at midday [Tuesday], which is the lowest midday temperature in Melbourne since 1986."

But the cold did not hang around into the evening to bring about overall minimum records.

It got down to -6.3 Celsius on Wednesday at Gluepot, a bird-watching reserve north of Renmark, the equal second lowest temperature on record for South Australia in August.

Some sites around Adelaide broke their August low temperature records.

Meanwhile out west

There is a second system making its way across. The West Australian south coast received a drenching in recent days thanks to the low pressure system sitting over the south-west of the country.

A number of sites between Albany and Esperance received daily rainfall totals of more than 100 millimetres, Dr Trewin said.

"The significance of that is that southern coastal strip of WA has actually been severely drought affected and much of it had had its driest two-year period on record coming into this event.

"So it was actually really useful rain."

With a bit of luck, the useful rain is heading east, falling over central Australia on Thursday and moving over inland New South Wales on Friday before heading out to sea.

The rain is not expected to be quite as intense as it was in WA, but Dr Trewin said much of outback South Australia could get at least 10 millimetres on Thursday, quite significant when we are talking about locations that got less than that in the whole of 2019.

"Tomorrow, much of inland New South Wales is expected to receive falls in the region of 25 to 50 millimetres."

Great news for those still well behind on rainfall for the past few years.

East coast low?

But this is the third time in the past month we have been talking about a low pressure system off the east coast potentially bringing damaging winds and waves to coastal New South Wales.

The last two systems brought about coastal erosion and flooding while not meeting the criteria for an east coast low.

Whether or not this low will meet the criteria is still uncertain.

"It's expected to eventually become a low in the Tasman; exactly what category it fits into is somewhat semantic," Dr Trewin said.

"At the moment, the most likely region for that heavy rain appears to be the south coast.

"Certainly a pretty close eye is being kept out for flood potential on the south coast and also for south Gippsland."

Spotty snow record

It may not come as a huge surprise that we do not have a very good record of snowfall at low levels in Australia, given how infrequently it occurs and that the BOM only has so many weather stations.

In confirming unusual geographically limited events like these, meteorologists like Dr Trewin rely on news reports as well as information from the public — it means your snow selfies can actually come in useful.

Dr Trewin is active on social media, searching for weather observations.

With snow pictures, he said it was helpful to include your elevation (if you know it) and a vague indication of location (he understands the need for privacy).

Information like time and date, as well as more information like snow depth or hail size, depending on the weather, can also be helpful — when in doubt, get your ruler out.

Then it needs to be somewhere they find it.

"If you post to Twitter, if you can tag in the relevant state office of the BOM, that will help things get picked up," he said.

Or the BOM has been teaming up with various universities to develop the WeatheX app, where you can send in your weather pictures and observations.

Or post them to Facebook groups where the meteorologists are watching, like the ABC group Weather Obsessed.

Then we can all enjoy the weather, even if we are stuck inside.

ABC