The big freeze is back.
Canberra woke up on Friday to minus 5 degrees, with temperatures only expected to creep above freezing point by 9am.
With crystal-clear skies, the apparent temperature felt more like minus 9 degrees, this morning.
This morning's big freeze marked the coldest day in Canberra this July, according to Weatherzone, with minus 4.5 degrees recorded on July 12.
The lowest temperature recorded this year was marked on June 28, when the mercury dipped to minus 6.
Spare a thought for our friends in Cooma where temperatures went as low as minus 8.8 degrees this morning.
Through the day, the Bureau of Meteorology was expecting a maximum of 11 degrees in Canberra by the mid-afternoon.
The same sub-zero temperatures were expected through to Saturday with a minimum of minus 2 forecast in the morning rising to a maximum of 10 degrees.
On Sunday, temperatures should rise above freezing again to a balmy 1-degree minimum and 12-degree maximum.
As the cold took hold at the beginning of the month, police warned people not to leave cars idling and unattended outside their homes as they waited for the frost to thaw on the windscreen.
Cunning thieves have been targeting households where people stay indoors while the cars warm up.
The police had seized notebooks from brazen criminals who had identified likely targets meticulously.
Winter started off cold and there's been little let up - even with the warmish spell of the past few days.
Last year, for example, the first two weeks of winter, at the beginning of June, were 2.5 degrees warmer than this year's.
The culprit, according to meteorologists, is Antarctic winds from the south and south-west.
"That cold front that we got came through with the cold conditions up from the Antarctic area, so we had a cold front that brought in some very cold southerly air and that's what brought all the snow as well," Clem Davis, a retired meteorologist and honorary lecturer at the ANU, said as the cold spell set in.
The cold winter followed an unusually cooler - and wetter - summer.
In January, for example, the ACT received twice as much rain as the January average, with 57 millimeters falling on the Brindabellas in one 24-hour period.
Temperatures failed to rise above 33 degrees for the first time in 27 years, according to Canberra Airport data released by the Bureau of Meteorology.
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