On average, Canberra and surrounds had a frostier and drier June than usual. Photo: File.
The beginning of winter came with a bang – Canberra and its surrounds haven’t seen a June this cold for decades.
The Capital saw its coldest start to a June day since 2015 on 28 June, with a minimum of minus 6 degrees at the Canberra airport just before 7 am.
Weatherzone’s Anthony Sharwood said the year’s previous coldest morning was minus 4.5 degrees on 15 June, but that was nowhere near the coldest the Capital has ever felt.
“For those who love records, the national capital’s coldest recorded temp was minus 10 degrees in July 1971,” he said.
“[But on 28 June] Australia’s coldest overnight temps were all in the mountains and tablelands in southern NSW near Canberra, with the mercury bottoming out at minus 8.1 at Cooma Airport.”
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, mean maximum temperatures in the ACT were 1 to 2 degrees below average, while the mean minimum temperatures were around 1 degree cooler.
“Settled conditions at the start and end of the month resulted in some particularly cold nights,” its climate summary stated.
“Daytime temperatures were [also] particularly cool for the first half of the month, as a strong south-westerly flow covered most of south-eastern Australia.”
This was the tenth consecutive month where the mean maximum temperature at Canberra Airport was below the average at the current site.
The warmest day was on 24 June when the mercury reached 14.8 degrees. But this marked the first June since 1993 when Canberra Airport did not reach at least 15 degrees.
While we’ve seen plenty of rain throughout 2022, June was actually drier than average for the Capital.
For the ACT as a whole, June rainfall was 36 per cent below the 1961-1990 average, which is just the second month since October 2021 that’s experienced below-average rain.
“Most of the rain for the month fell between 5 and 8 June, from the passage of a series of cold fronts,” the BOM said.
“The highest daily totals were in the 24 hours to 9 am on 6 June, with reports of 10 to 20 mm.”
Weather records were broken in the surrounding regions of NSW as well.
Cabramurra in the mountains had its lowest June mean temperature in 25 years of records, averaging out its maximums and minimums to just 0.9 degrees. The previous record was 1.7 degrees in 2007.
Both Tumbarumba Post Office and Thredbo recorded their lowest June mean daily maximums for at least 20 years, 10.4 degrees and 0.1 degrees, respectively.
Cooma was freezing as well, seeing its coldest June mean daily minimum for at least 20 years. Both the visitors centre and airport sites recorded colder-than-average minimum temperatures for the month, with Cooma Visitors Centre equalling its 1992 record of minus 3.2 degrees and the airport just edging out its 2000 record with an average minimum of minus 2.7 degrees.
A series of cold fronts during the first week of June brought snowfall as low as 800 metres over the Snowy Mountains, leading to some resorts opening early.
This also resulted in the Perisher Valley taking the prize of wettest June in NSW, recording 229.6 mm throughout the month.
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