Weather News

Frosty start to winter solstice

Ben Domensino, Thursday June 21, 2018 - 09:57 AEST

It was another cold and frosty morning across the southern half a Australia on Thursday as the sun rose on the shortest day of the year.

The winter solstice occurs on Thursday evening in Australia, making this the shortest day of the year across the country.

While the morning of the winter solstice is bound to be cold, some places registered their lowest June temperature in more than a decade this morning.

Victoria's Horsham reached -3 degrees at 7:43am, which is its coldest June morning since 2007. Further east, Charlton dipped to -2.5 degrees just before 7am, making this its coldest June morning in 12 years.

In Queensland, Birdsville registered its coldest morning in three years on Thursday, dipping to 2.2 degrees.

Many other places in central and southern Australia experienced their lowest temperature since last winter this morning, including Renmark (-3.4C), Uluru (0.6C), Mildura (-1.4C), Bendigo (-1.7C) and Woomera (2.7C).

This morning's frosty start comes after some places in Queensland registered their lowest temperatures in a decade earlier in the week.

This week's string of frosty mornings have occurred as a lingering mass of cool air combined with calm and clear overnight conditions. This setup allowed the previous day's warmth to radiate away from the ground at night, causing the mercury to plummet.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2018

Enter a postcode or town name for local weather, or text to search the site. » advanced search

Weather News

» all stories

A digger's letter from snowbound Gallipoli

08:00 AEST In weather terms, the Anzacs at Gallipoli copped it all – from parched, scorching summers to freezing winters as weather systems with origins in the Russian Arctic surged southwards over Turkey.