The ABC has the unhappy news ^[1] that it really was very cold overnight.

The mercury dipped to 0.3 degrees Celsius overnight in Canberra, the coldest December temperature on record.

The record books were also re-written in Braidwood where the temperature dropped to minus 0.4 degrees and in Goulburn at minus 1.

There were also snowfalls on the Brindabella Range.

Sean Carson from the Bureau of Meteorology says it is Canberra’s coldest December morning since record keeping began 75 years ago.

So if you have to explain to your girlfriend why you had to wake her up in the middle of the night to ask if it was OK to close the doors left open for her dogs, that’s a bloody useful bit of data.