A rare and short-lived dusting of snow has fallen on parts of Queensland and northern New South Wales, surprising residents in high-altitude border areas on Tuesday as Australia’s south-east shivered through a windy and wet start to the week.
Video footage taken at Spicers Peak Lodge at the Scenic Rim, west of the Gold Coast in famously sunny Queensland, showed snow flurries on Tuesday morning.
In a clip posted on Facebook, the lodge’s proprietors said it was the first – albeit brief – time they had seen snow there since 2015.
“Snowfall! A few hours ago, we were lucky enough to witness snow for a few minutes. The last time we experienced this was on 17 July 2015,” they wrote.
Snow was also seen in northern NSW at Mount Mackenzie, just south of the Queensland border.
The unusual sight for the area was the result of a low pressure system that has brought damaging winds and drenching rain to much of the south-east.
Areas of Melbourne and regional Victoria on Tuesday continued to deal with the aftermath of more than 100km/h winds and heavy rainfall.
Emergency services closed the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road near Sassafras in both directions after a landslide on Tuesday afternoon.
Moderate flood warnings were still in place for rivers around the state, including parts of the Watts River, Latrobe River and the Yarra River.
The Yarra at Coldstream reached 3.94 metres on Tuesday afternoon. It was still rising and expected to exceed 5.10 metres overnight into Wednesday, above moderate flood level.
The Bureau of Meteorology still had sheep grazier and marine wind warnings in place for NSW on Wednesday morning.
