Spring might be beginning on Monday but it hasn’t felt that way for several parts of south-eastern Australia blanketed in snow this weekend by a late wintry blast.
Snow flurries were reported as far north as the northern tablelands of New South Wales and down to as low as 400m above sea level in Tasmania, according to Sarah Scully, a meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology.
These conditions had been brought on by a “very vigorous cold front” which crossed south-eastern Australia on Friday, Scully said.
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It initially reached parts of South Australia and western Victoria before it crossed the remainder of Victoria and pushed into NSW on Saturday.
“This was the third of a series of cold fronts that moved across south-eastern Australia this week, really from Wednesday,” Scully said.
“It’s been a period of bursts of really windy and showery conditions for the last few days but it was the last front that had the coldest air associated with it.”
The system brought widespread damaging winds, as well as cold air, showers, storms, small hail, large waves and snow down to low levels.
When it crossed SA there were probably two small tornadoes in the Adelaide suburbs early on Friday morning, with official observation showing winds were in the damaging (but not destructive) realm, according to Scully.
Many locations received snow which usually don’t, including the Mount Lofty Ranges and the Flinders Ranges – the first time they’d seen snow since 2022, she said.
In NSW there was snow in Walcha in the northern tablelands, in Oberon, Orange and Isabella in the central tablelands, as well as in Jindabyne and Island Bend to the north-west.
There were also reports of flurries at Mount Macedon in Victoria and heavy snow on Ben Lomond in Tasmania.
The strongest wind gusts occurred on Saturday around Victoria, with a 128km/h gust at Mount Hotham, 124km/h at Mount Buller, 119km/h at Wilsons Promontory, 116km/h at Cape Nelson and 107km/h at Mount William in the Grampians.
There was also an 106km/h gust at St Kilda in Melbourne.
“It was a particularly windy Friday night into the early hours of Saturday morning for Victoria – the front crossed the across the Melbourne metro area around about midnight,” Scully said.
The cold front that brought all of this wild weather cleared out into the Tasman Sea on Saturday, dragging with it the peak winds, and the winds eased across eastern Victoria and NSW on Saturday evening, with all warnings cancelled.
“It’s brought very cold air up over the country last night – clear skies allowed those very cold temperatures to plummet even further,” Scully said.
As a result, there were widespread areas of frost through inland parts of south-east and eastern Australia on Sunday morning.
• This article was amended on 1 September 2025 to correct the name of the meteorologist Sarah Scully. An earlier version incorrectly referred to her as Sandra.
