Melbourne had its coldest day of the year, and snow has fallen in outer metropolitan areas.

The cold front also dumped snow across Ballarat, the Grampians and Mt Macedon.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Andrea Peace said Melbourne’s temperature peaked at 10.3C before 11am on Friday.

“It will go down as the coldest day so far this year,” Ms Peace told AAP.

The previous coldest day of 2014 reached only 11.2C.

Ms Peace said the amount of snow was a “fairly significant event” for Victoria.

“What’s been really significant about this is the widespread nature of it, and also we are seeing the snow down to 200 and 300 metres (above sea level),” she said.

“That doesn’t happen very often and certainly in Ballarat and Mt Macedon we don’t see it settle on the ground the way we’ve seen it from this event.”

Epping and Mt Dandenong, on the fringes of the Melbourne metropolitan area, also had solid dustings of snow.

Victoria was buffeted by severe winds on Thursday ahead of the cold front, and trees and power lines fell across Melbourne and regional areas.

Ms Peace said snow would continue to fall until early Saturday morning before the coldest air moved away.

“After tomorrow we’ll just have a couple of showers around in the south of the state and then after that it’s going to clear, and we’re actually looking at pretty well fine conditions,” she said.

Ms Peace said Victorians could expect frosty mornings but fine days until the middle of next week.

The town took to social media to photograph the weather.

INCREDIBLE! #snow #Ballarat http://t.co/LqLfmH9DVK pic.twitter.com/h3JgpofFlN

— The Courier (@ballaratcourier) August 1, 2014

That whole fake snow thing at @sovereignhill looks pretty tame by comparison to the real #ballarat pic.twitter.com/sKZmCATiqu

— Paul Nolan (@pwnolan) August 1, 2014

And the aftermath… What fun that was! #Ballarat pic.twitter.com/IstJq5Zq8v

— Anne Fedorowytsch (@AnneFed) August 1, 2014