Couple of bits here too:

http://www.blackheathweather.com/barton.html

http://www.blackheathweather.com/pastfalls.html

The photo below from '65 is one of the better looking pics from my town:

http://www.blackheathweather.com/snowclassics/house1.jpg

The Ivanhoe snow is more likely to have been in 1901 than 1900, although a foot sounds a bit too much to be realistic. The 4-5 July 1900 event saw very heavy snow accumulations but these were mostly confined to the Central Tablelands and adjacent plains (Queanbeyan, for example, got only rain) - it appears to have been the result of an extreme upper-level cold pool associated with an east coast low or trough. The 28 July 1901 event was a more classical south-westerly cold outbreak, and saw the most extensive snowfalls on record over south-eastern Australia (from site reports, snow appears to have fallen over somewhere between 50% and 80% of NSW, as well as significant parts of SA, southern Queensland and Victoria), but totals were smaller than the 1900 event in areas influenced by both.

Thanks a lot, Blizz. Between yourself and Andrew I've had about a decade of questions about that and more answered within a day! The two pieces from your posts that really stand out are the archived 1965 ABC radio news audio from AWN and the photograph of a Blackheath house under a hefty layer of snow. They even made a world-class snowman!

A foot does does seem a rather extravagant figure, doesn't it. Perhaps it was in drifts up to a foot and less than half that on open ground? Any snow settling in far western NSW could be considered an extreme event.

I might've heard about this event on ABC Local Radio, where it was mentioned anecdotally by the presenter.

Snowfall coverage over 50-80% of NSW in 1901! It would be an amazing event to experience on the ground and imagine the aerial and satellite images if it happened nowadays!

A bit more on the precip from the 1900 event (and reinforcing its likely nature as an easterly system) - a number of stations in the Goulburn/Taralga region recorded 100+ mm of rain in 24 hours on 5 July, including Goulburn (117), Taralga (106) and Chatsbury, between the two (140). This appears to have fallen as rain. A substantial area of 100+ is also analysed on the South Coast.

Blair,

A reasonable amount of that precip in Taralga would have been snow - ~2ft of snow was reported in town to 9am on the 6th.

It seems likely (within the context of what little is known) that the centre/axis of the surface low lay in the Goulburn/Taralga area with the upper low to the NW so the demarcation between heavy snow and heavy rain may have been quite abrupt around there. Unfortunately less is recorded/written about that part of the world than the more popular areas to the north and south-east.

Thanks for the info Andrew - I'd seen the report of rain from Goulburn but not the one of snow from Taralga.

That's a large (and uniform) amount of precipitation over such a wide area. When did meteorological measurements begin to show features like ECLs?

David, you may find this site below interesting which produces data back to 1948 I think.

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/Composites/Day/


I've just been on the blower chatting to Jim Nugent, the photographer of most of the 1965 snowfalls on my site. He was saying that in 1965 the trucks couldn't get up the hill from the Connaught Quarry (Blackheath) until the following Thursday morning after the snow started on Saturday around lunchtime. This was from snow accumulations not ice. He said there was 'three foot of snow in lots of places' and I'd say that was drifts.

This pic below is one of the best I've been given from the '65 event. Also from J.Nugent.

http://www.blackheathweather.com/snowclassics/car1.jpg


The 1900 event (and others) is one I'd like to research more. Might contact our local paper about it.

Snow settling enough to close roads for 5 days outside the Snowies...I wonder just how many photos might be lurking in shoeboxes of the '65 event? It might be worth even putting an ad in your local paper to see if people might let you scan some of them. You'd assume that photo of the car was taken somewhere like Perisher after a heavy dump, not anywhere else in Australia!

In 2004 there was a short SMH article stating that another snowfall event like 1965 is 'overdue'.

the past 3 years i have lived at buller for the winter, this year i cant coz of VCE and school actually matters now

which is a bit dissapointing because i have a feeling that with the recent el nino over, we might get some good snow, well, anything is better then last year.

Blizz, when are we every going to see falls like that !!!!!!! Hopefully in our lifetime....
Also, what do others think would happen to a modern Blue Mtns society with snow falls like the one blizz posted above

If it happens to dump down like that then the highway and rail line would be closed so we would'nt be going any where for a few days.

Yeah, it would be nice. There have been some fantastic falls around Oberon and areas south going a few years back so no doubt they will come again and so will better falls for the upper BM. Of course GW has impacted to some extent but a severe drought has also influenced things. Its cyclical and I reckon this year is a good chance of a nice fall or two.

Okay, this fall below wasn't big but it was very recent in 2005 in my backyard, so okay falls still occur.

http://www.blackheathweather.com/winterarchives/23-6-05j.jpg

And this one in 1999 produced close to 30cm all up or even more from memory, out Shooters Way. That was a deadset ripper to be a part of. Hardly a soul out that day except the two young lasses visiting their bfs in prison!

http://www.blackheathweather.com/winterarchives/oberon5a.jpg

Edit: If a major disruption occured these days, there would be a fair bit of warning via the charts etc. It would be an issue of course but less of a surprise, I would say.

All this snow talk! Ahh the memories! Heading down to thredbo tomorrow with the better half for a few days of hiking, won't be any snow but maybe a storm or two.

Counting down the days till winter, very exciting.

Cheers

To everyone
just thinking the other day how much the internet has inhanced our understanding of the weather & provided access to a vast amount of weather info - imagine what we all be doing with regards to our weather interest without the internet. Just going along to AMOS weather meetings, checking the rain & temp gauges every day. I use to get my weather info from the Herald & Channel 2 news. Now we have all this at our fingertips. Haven't checked out too many other weather sites (except when I lived in the UK) but the BOM & Weatherzone look after us Aussies pretty well. Does any other country have better access to weather info than us??
Andrew

I reckon if we experienced snowfalls like the ones Blizz has posted pics to there would be a fair amount of structural damage to houses/sheds/shops etc. I don't the specifics of Council's building and planning policy, but I don't think there is much consideration for a large snowfall.

Apart from that there could also be possible large spread and comparatively long lasting power failures with local roads impassable and enough weight on old poles to bring down a few wires.

All in all I think there would be somewhat of a SNAFU going on should we get similar snow falls.

Mind you I do hope it happens!

:cheers: Will

Those photos are great as are all the others I've seen from your site, Blizz. Quite inspirational for a bit of snow-chasing this winter, I must say, which brings me to something I've been pondering lately.

A few pages back in the topic I recall someone mentioning 4WDs in snowy conditions, and I'm debating whether to get a small 'soft-option' AWD vehicle next car purchase...or not. The other consideration both from environmental and economical perspectives for the next vehicle will be mileage (especially when you're driving longer distances to see snow!).

In the US you can now buy hybrid-drive Toyota RAV4s, but in Australia its down to the Toyota Prius and a Honda model, both 2WD. Either way, I'll probably buy a set of snowchains as I ski a bit each year too, so it won't make a huge amount of difference. At the moment I drive a small sedan.

Any thoughts or experiences about driving in snow?

There's a bit here to start with, gotta dash, more another time.

http://www.blackheathweather.com/snowdriving.html

David,

If you're on-road, driving in snow and ice is all about traction and balance which makes an AWD more than suitable.

Andrew.