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Earliest recorded snow in history of Western Australia

earliest-recorded-snow-in-history-of-western-australia

Residents of Western Australia woke up to extremely rare April snow on Bluff Knoll in the Stirling Ranges on April 19, 2019. This is the earliest snow ever recorded in the history of Western Australia.

Matt Boterhoven, a meteorologist with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said snow was an extremely rare occurrence in April.

"It’s exceptional. We’ve only recorded once, in the last 100 years, snow as early as this on top of the Stirling Ranges," he told ABC. "It’s related to a very strong cold air mass moving over the southwest of the state, so when conditions get below freezing and there’s precipitation, snow can form on top of Stirling Ranges."

The last time Western Australia saw April snow was on April 20, 1970. Bluff Knoll receives snow approximately 1.7 times per year.

On April 18, BOM warned residents of southwest WA to expect to be impacted by a cold front in the coming two days. "This will likely bring squally showers and thunderstorms, strong winds and dangerous surf conditions. Temperatures are likely to be well below average behind the cold front, with possible snow on the Stirling Range."

YouTube video

Featured image credit: JMA/Himawari-8, RAMMB/CIRA. Acquired April 19, 2019

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4 Comments

  1. We’re down in the valley looking up to the Stirling Ranges. Canninton, south of Perth. We get snow up there and Albany…technically…every half dozen years or so but I never even heard of enough to make a single snowman. If you can find pictures of Western Australian land covered with anything but heavy frost, good luck. I have live Betta fish (Native to Thai rice paddies) living outside in an oaken wine barrel, to keep the mozzies down, to give some idea of how mild our winters are.

  2. That will teach the Aussies why they should not have shipped all that Carbon to China to be burned into Carbon Dioxide. Don’t they know that CO2 causes higher temperatures and droughts? And snow was going to be a thing of the past by 2012?
    Oh….wait….

    1. mate don’t believe everything you read when it comes to this Global Warming codswallop. I’m about 30 km as the crow frlies from the Stirling Ranges and had shorts and T-shirt on all day then as now when this supposed snow happened. There was no news locally about it and I assure you if it is like any other snow we supposedly got over the last fifty years you won;t see any pics of it either. Just a technicality. As for your global warming BS. Fremantle Harbor is less than 200 years old. It has high water marks from tides past which have not been exceeded in the last 100 years. THINK ABOUT IT!

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