NSW weather: snow on the way as cold front ends streak of warm winter days
A cold front sweeping across New South Wales has ended a record run of warm winter days and brought the promise of snow and heavy rainfall to parts of the state.
Much of NSW has enjoyed a stint of unusually warm weather, with Sydney setting a new winter record of 15 days above 20C.
But a cold snap has reversed that trend, with temperatures plummeting and snow expected in parts of the state.
“In Sydney, we’re seeing a peak of 14C today, which is very different than the 27C or 28C recorded over the weekend,” Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Hugh McDowell said on Tuesday.
“There will be a kind of a slow recovery in temperatures in the latter part of the week ... [but in Sydney] we don’t see anything above 20C until Sunday.”
Snow was likely across much of the tableland areas, with places like Katoomba and Guyra expected to receive a dusting.
Elsewhere, widespread rainfall of 30-50mm was expected in the 48 hours from Tuesday, with up to 90mm possible in some areas.
A severe weather warning was issued for a swathe of the eastern seaboard between Gosford on the Central Coast to Batemans Bay on the south coast.
Damaging winds gusts in excess of 90km/h were possible from late Tuesday onwards, McDowell warned, along with hazardous surf and coastal erosion.
Thunderstorms were also possible. Inland areas were not been spared the wild weather, with extreme wind – described as a mini-tornado by locals – ripping the roof off a house in Orange in the central west.
The bureau was investigating what caused the freak weather event, McDowell said.
“The maximum winds recorded in Orange, on our observations, was 28km/h, so it looks like it was a very localised, small scale event,” he said.
Conditions across the state were expected to ease after the systems driving the wet weather moved offshore on Wednesday.