Snow falls on coldest day of the year in Melbourne

Low-level snow has fallen Victoria’s coldest day of the year so far, as a cold front sweeps across south-eastern Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology said at least several centimetres of snow had blanketed all Victorian alpine resorts, and that snow had fallen in parts of the state with elevations of 600 metres.

The plunging temperatures have been brought on by a blast of cold winds from the Southern Ocean, which collided with a cloud bank over south-eastern Australia and caused rain. In elevated parts of Victoria where there is enough cool air close to the ground, the rain fell as snow.

“Because this was a fairly brief burst of cold air ... the snow level is going up today, so it was down to 600 metres, but it will be rising [in elevation] pretty quickly over the course of the day,” said bureau meteorologist Robert Urbaniak.

“So tomorrow [Friday] you still might get snow, but the snow level will have risen to 1400 [metres].”

Callers to 3AW on Thursday said it was snowing in Kinglake, Pheasant Creek and Healesville, all north-east of Melbourne. The Snow Victoria Facebook page predicted, using BOM data, there would also be “significant snow flurries” at Mount Macedon, Trentham and even Mount Dandenong.

Thursday ultimately became a day of pleasant discovery for many parts of Victoria, with social media quickly filling with footage of snow everywhere from Lilydale to Mount Buninyong near Ballarat, Buxton to Tolmie to Marysville, where the combination of white snow and red autumn leaves made for a breathtaking scene on the town’s main street.

Snow also fell in elevated areas of NSW, Tasmania and the ACT.

The mercury in central Melbourne hadn’t climbed any higher than 12.7 degrees on Thursday, making May 6 the coldest day of the year so far.

On April 19, Melbourne had a lower minimum temperature at 5.3 degrees, but a higher maximum.

In Ferny Creek, in the Dandenongs, the minimum of 0.6 degrees, was the lowest in the town since 2020, and the mercury stayed below 7 degrees all of Thursday.

The rest of Victoria also shivered through the day: Mallacoota, at Victoria’s eastern tip, never reached above 10.4 degrees, its coldest May day since record keeping began there. Nearby Gabo Island had its coldest day since 2020, while Mount Hotham and Bairnsdale recorded their lowest temperatures since 2024.

The ski resorts reported solid snowfalls, with Hotham saying on Facebook “Winter is starting to feel very real”.

The chilly conditions follow period of unseasonably warm late-autumn weather in Melbourne, but Urbaniak said it was common for conditions to change suddenly.

“That’s the sort of one reason people like to talk about four seasons in one day in Melbourne because ahead of the cold front you get warm north-westerly winds – and it’s dry – and then you get the rain, with the cold front, and you [get] the cold air behind the cold front with showers.”

Temperatures will rise in the coming days, and reach 21 in a week’s time.

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