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Temperatures plummet, wild weather predicted

After an unseasonably warm start to the cold season, winter has struck with a vengeance.

A cold front trekked down from Western Australia into South Australia on Monday, and will extend its icy grip further across New South Wales and Victoria on Tuesday.

Check TND’s weather page for conditions where you are

Temperatures will dip to as low as 7 degrees in Melbourne, and 9 degrees in Sydney and Adelaide, and then slowly creep up for the rest of the week.

newdaily_230614_weather2In some areas of Victoria and New South Wales, temperatures will be 6 degrees colder than the average, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Jenny Sturrock, meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology says the source of the cold front is the Antarctic, which to those shivering and shuddering will sound spot on.

“It began over in Western Australia over the weekend, and the cold air mass over there is now bringing frost to many parts of the South West,” she says.

Blizzard warnings have been issued for many parts of the southern states, which means we can expect “violent, very cold wind that’s loaded with snow,” Ms Strurrock says.

• Click the owl to find out how to stay safe during the icy conditions:  

newdaily_230614_weather3Peak gusts exceeding 100 kilometres an hour will buffet the states, along with strong winds, heavy rainfall, hail and falling snow over mountainous regions in New South Wales and Victoria.

“We anticipate around half a metre of snow to have fallen by the end of the week, and potentially more,” Ms Sturrock says.

The freezing conditions will subside after Tuesday, but not for long.

Ms Sturrock says “another potential vigorous cold front” will hit South Australia and Victoria by Friday or Saturday.

newdaily_230614_weather4While this isn’t the worst cold front to strike the continent, this first taste of winter will seem exceptionally harsh because of the mild weather so far.

“It might feel a little bit more unusual because we’ve had that very mild introduction to winter, and this has kind of come on quite vigorously.

“Especially at the very start of winter, we had a ridge of high pressure systems that really sat over the southern states and was producing, for almost three weeks, mild conditions, so yeah it is probably making this [cold snap] feel more significant,” Ms Sturrock says.

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