By Lani Oataway and Tim Fookes, ABC
Temperatures dropped close to zero as snow blanketed Mount Canobolas, near Orange, on Friday morning.
Photo: Supplied / Christine Wade
The Southern Hemisphere is still in the first month of autumn, but snow is already falling in parts of New South Wales.
Temperatures have dropped to single digits across much of south-eastern Australia, with some areas in the Central and Southern Tablelands and Snowy Mountains plunging below zero.
Property owners in the regions of Orange and Millthorpe woke this morning to snow falling on their lawns.
Jeremy Black, who lives at Springside near Orange, said watching the sun rise through snowflakes was bizarre.
“It was really surreal,” he said.
“Normally I would go out there and go, ‘Oh this is amazing, winter wonderland’.
“But given yesterday was about 26 degrees, it just felt really odd.”
There has been enough snow to make a snowman in parts of NSW.
Photo: Supplied / Snowy Hydro
Black said it was the first time snow had fallen on his property in March.
“It was a little bit dark when I started making the kids’ lunches. I looked out the window and thought, ‘Is that rain? It’s pretty thick,'” he said.
“I stepped outside and it was just flakes of snow.
“As the light came up it just got fluffier and heavier.”
Nearby in Huntley, resident Russell Squire said he also felt surprised by the weather.
Snow falling on Mt Canobolas.
Photo: Supplied / Christine Wade
“It looked more like winter time,” he said.
“It was floating down trees and just drifting around so it’s quite beautiful.”
Records could be broken
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Kate Doyle said some areas in southern NSW could see temperature records broken.
Paddocks at Springside NSW had a blanket of snow on Friday morning.
Photo: Supplied / Dougal Munro
“Some of our locations are expecting their coldest March day on record today,” she said.
“It’s looking like we’ve got some snow down to about 1400 metres with the possibility of some of those falls south of Orange and the Oberon ranges.
“So rug up.”
Temperatures in Orange fell to 0.6 degrees Celsius this morning, with a maximum of 10 degrees forecast for later today.
“Certainly the cool change has made its presence felt,” Doyle said.
The Caboone Shire Council said access to the summit of Mount Canobolas, in the state’s Central West, had been closed after 10 centimetres of snow fell on Friday morning.
-ABC