Melbourne’s weather is in the icy grip of a cold snap that arrived literally a week out from summer and is expected to continue. It’s November and I’m in full thermals with every heater in my house cranking. Can anyone catch one single break from La Niña?
Extreme winds, heavy rain and sporadic hail storms blasted the city on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning with the daily temperatures barely reaching 13C and lows dropping below 7C. It’s the first time Melbourne has recorded three consecutive November days under 14C since 1965.
Across the state, temperatures dropped even lower and 30cm of snow fell at Falls Creek on Tuesday morning.
Winds reached up to 102km/h at Melbourne Airport on Saturday evening and the State Emergency Service received 549 calls in the 24 hours before 5pm Sunday, mostly for fallen trees.
More than 60 flood warnings were in place at the weekend across northern Victoria, where towns have pretty much been .
In Melbourne, it was literally raining sideways.
A Day On The Green music festival in Geelong on Saturday was giving Splendour in the Grass when heavy rain . Festivalgoers were bogged and stranded and hundreds were forced to sleep in their cars after the festival wrapped up before tractors could extract them from the mud on Sunday morning.
The Illuminate the River festival along Melbourne’s previously flooded Maribyrnong River was also cancelled at the last minute on Saturday afternoon, due to unsafe high winds of more than 80km/h.
“The safety of our artists, staff and patrons is our highest priority and unfortunately, our safety team has advised us that staging, rigging and rides will hit their limit as the wind picks up,” organisers said in a statement at 6pm.
It was a shocking weekend all ’round, but one of the worst things about the weather was that Melbourne truly gaslit us all on Sunday and Monday with the five-minute blocks of clear blue sky before another downpour. Honestly is there anything more disgustingly Melbourne?
So when’s this cold weather going to end and will Melbourne even have a summer?
This week, Melbourne’s weather won’t start to warm up until Wednesday or Thursday but the colder-than-average temperatures and higher-than-average rainfall are into December. Conditions are expected to return to normal maybe, finally, possibly in January.
So it’s beginning to look a lot like soggy Christmas — maybe even a white Christmas for mountain residents?!
Love living in Melbourne’s northern hemisphere era.
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