BIG seas have battered Newcastle's beaches for a few days, but it's a wave of cold nights and minimum temperatures that has really broken the news that winter is here in earnest.
With a cold snap hitting parts of the east coast with record lows, the Hunter is escaping with relatively balmy maximums but icy evenings when the mercury begins to drop.
The Bureau of Meteorology said that while NSW was unlikely to break records, cooler than normal minimums were set to settle in over the next week or so.
"The cool and drier air mass brought by southerly air streams, together with the radiative cooling under clear skies, has brought the chilling and cooling," meteorologist Jiwan Park said.
"It looks like those cold morning temperature ranges in the single digit, with minimums of five to seven degrees in the lower Hunter and and close to zero degrees in the upper Hunter.
Temperatures are expected to ease a little on Thursday, but a cold front moving across the Hunter early on Friday will drive them back down early on Friday and into the weekend.
Overall, though, the winter months are shaping as warmer than usual.
In its long-range forecast overview this month the Bureau of Meteorology expected days and nights from July to September to be "very likely to be warmer than average across Australia, with an increased chance of unusually warm days and nights".
Rainfall along the eastern seaboard and in the nation's interior is due to be above average over the same period, but lower for most of Victoria and Tasmania, SA and parts of WA.
The chill in the short term, though, could deliver a smattering of winter wonder in the high country.
"With this cold front there may be some snow flurries over the Barrington Tops," Mr Park said.
"On the other hand, it will be just some snow flurries, not settling snow. We need enough moisture to have settling snow."
The hazardous seas that have rolled onto beaches this week were driven by a southwesterly air stream stemming from a low-pressure system in the Tasman Sea.
That helped drive waves of three to four metres on Tuesday, Mr Park said, but conditions may ease late on Wednesday.
