Canberra will dip back into Autumn for the rest of the week after Monday's freezy hint that winter had arrived.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecast minimum temperatures just above freezing right through to the weekend after the opening blast of iciness.
On Monday, it was minus 3 degrees in Canberra at 7am (but it felt like minus 6). The mercury only reached above freezing at 8am.
The Bureau was warning of frost and fog but not of temperatures sinking well below freezing.
At the ski resorts, the snow machines were working overtime in the run up to the opening of the ski season on June 8.
Friday and Saturday were the first two big nights of snowmaking for 2024, Thredbo Resort said, with the snow guns blasting across the mountain, including to the Cruiser area.
Perisher said its 200+ snow guns would produce snow across Front Valley, Centre Valley, Mount Perisher, Smiggin Holes, and Blue Cow.
Nature's snow machine did some of the work: the resort reported five centimetres of fresh snow on the top of the range, with flakes falling, down as far as the village.
Three new fan guns have been added to the snowmaking system, Thredbo Resort said, replacing the pipeline snowmaking gun.
The new guns at the base of the Kosciuszko chairlift were in addition to the fifteen added in 2022 and 2023.
Thredbo Top Valley wasn't as cold as Canberra with temperatures peaking at just under minus 3 degrees around 2am on Monday - but the "feels like" temperature was minus 9.
It'll be cold for the rest of the week for the Snowies, with temperatures peaking at 7 degrees during the day and plunging to minus 3 at night.
With more sub-zero temperatures forecast, the resorts were preparing for true winter.
