We still may be a few weeks away from the start of winter, but there are plenty of shivering grey nomads who are saying: ‘You could have fooled me!”
Many parts of Australia’s south-east have recorded ridiculously chilly temperatures in recent days.
The ABC reports that many inland areas were hit with minimum temperatures below zero yesterday morning, including Bathurst, Orange and Cobar. Cooma reportedly reached 2.7C on Sunday, its coldest May maximum on record, while Canberra peaked at just 7.8C, its coldest May day in more than 20 years.
Victoria was also cold and snowy across much of the state. The ABC reports that, in the Yarra Valley, Mount Donna Buang recorded about 15 centimetres of snow, with 10 to 20 centimetres of snow also falling at Mount Buller and Mount Hotham.
Could it be time to head north? PIC: Dan Hamill / Pexels
Yesterday, Rutherglen temperatures fell to –2C while parts of the Wimmera and south-west regions hit zero.
There has been widespread frost across Tasmania, with parts of the central plateau dropping to –7C on Sunday morning, with snow falling on higher ground.
The ABC reports that Launceston dropped to –2.5C yesterday morning, well below its average minimum temperature of 5.1C in May.
And even in the Sunshine State, some inland regions were recording their coldest May morning on record. At one point, the mercury hit a low of -5.6 degrees Celsius in Oakey in Queensland, but wind chill and other factors made it feel more like -9.5 degrees.
According to the ABC, data from the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that this is the coldest May morning on record for the town just west of Toowoomba. The previous low was -4.4 set in May 2019.
A record was also set in Dalby, where the mercury dropped to -3.2, beating the -2.2 record set in 1911.
Records have also been broken on the Sunshine Coast, which recorded to 3.3, and in Blackwater in the Central Highlands the minimum dropped to 3.1. In south-east Queensland, it got down to 9 in Brisbane.
However, grey nomads who haven’t yet got far enough north can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that a slow ‘warm-up’ is expected by the end of the week for much of the country.
Nonetheless, there could well be quite a few travellers not prepared to take the risk … and who are fast-tracking their plans to head up to the Tropics!
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Yes its a bit cold for 3 or 4 days.
We’re in no rush to head North
Maybe in about a months time.