Saturday 22nd of June 11.45a.m. Sunny patches / grey clouds moving across the lake. 22.2 / 37kph SW, Hg42%, 14.4C / 57.9F top of 15C / 59F. Showers. Marine wind warning.
Moon is 99.7% waning
Polar outbreak and snow ahead this week with Sydney and Melbourne on track for coldest start to winter in decades
6 hours ago
By ABC meteorologist Tom Saunders
Another polar air mass is forecast to hit parts of south-east Australia in the coming week. (ABC News: Jake Grant)
Parts of south-east Australia have recorded their coldest start to winter in decades, and another polar air mass will arrive during the coming week, promising to bring strong winds, showers, small hail and alpine snow.
In the meantime, a cold and showery weekend is already underway across southern Western Australia and the New South Wales coast, while frost has returned to the south-east inland after an icy week that brought subzero temperatures as far north as central Queensland.
Adding to the wintry systems, a major low-pressure system should soak WA from Wednesday onwards, continuing the recovery from a record drought in the state's west.
Showers in Sydney and Perth, frosty nights for Canberra, Melbourne
Yet another cold and showery weekend is developing along the NSW coast as cold southerly winds drive in showers off the Tasman Sea.
For Sydney, the soaking makes six wet weekends out of the past eight, and the city now only needs another 44 millimetres to surpass its annual average rainfall for an entire year.
By 9am Friday, Observatory Hill had received 1,178mm in 2024, about 1,000mm above most other capitals, apart from Darwin and Brisbane.
Snow dump possible this week for the Alps
The freezing weather during the past fortnight has not translated to heavy snow across the Alps due to a lack of precipitation.
But a welcome boost to the snow depth should arrive this week ahead of the school holidays.
Was the BOM's warm winter prediction wrong?
Seasonal forecasts have consistently predicted this June and winter as a whole to be warmer than normal — so was the Bureau Of Meteorology's (BOM) modelling way off the mark?
The short answer is no, because for most of Australia it hasn't been particularly cold, however, unfortunately for BOM, the one region where temperatures have been consistently cold just happens to include most of NSW and Victoria, our most highly populated states.
: 8:00pm, 88°F, high of 91°F today, humidity 62%, wind ESE @ 10mph, dew point 73°F, partly cloudy, mostly sunny. Had thunderheads building up all afternoon, luckily they disapated before getting here! 
