Two days of solid snowfall have added 20 centimetres of “white gold” underfoot at Falls Creek and ensured a bumper snow season continues into spring.
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Falls Creek resident, Chris Hocking, said this moderate to heavy snow started falling just after midnight on Sunday, as low as 900 metres above ground, with more expect to fall above 1300m on Wednesday.
“There’s been a tidy little snowfall that’s come through of white gold,” he said.
“We’ll probably see a few more come through, a few more snow flurries.”
Falls Creek temperatures have dipped below zero all this week, as low as -3.5 degrees, as a vigorous cold front passed through the region.
Albury received a total of 2.6 millimetres of rain across Monday and Tuesday, but Falls Creek only had one burst of 2mm of rain on Tuesday morning that did not take away from the snow.
The forecast for skiers is for a sunny weekend ahead.
“While it’s September, it’s more like mid-winter temperatures,” Mr Hocking said.
He said with less than four weeks left until snow season finishes, Falls Creek had closed one of its lifts, but it was reopened after this latest snowfall.
“The skiing around all the mountains has been very good,” he said.
“A lot of people have taken advantage of the good conditions.”
The 2014 snow season featured a strong start, but not much snowfall after mid-August, and has been contrasted this year with Falls Creek still recording a natural snow depth of over a metre in September.
The snowfields and ski lifts will continue to stay open during the school holidays until the last day of the season on October 4.
Bureau of Meteorology climatologist, Jonathan Pollock, said there was a 50 per cent chance the Border would experience higher than normal rainfall during spring, to go along with the late snowfall.
“Certainly these conditions aren’t unheard of of Albury,” he said.
This means Border residents can expect some big rainfall events in the next few months, with the median rainfall between September and November at 167mm.
Monday’s wintry low of 13.6 degrees was also Albury’s coldest day in two weeks, but Mr Pollock had some good news, saying the region should reach 20 degrees again by Thursday and continue with more spring-like temperatures of 22 and 23 degrees into the weekend.
The BOM’s climate outlook states it is unlikely the Border will experience higher spring temperatures than the average of 21.1 degrees.
