A major snowstorm is getting underway in Australia and is expected to last for several days and deliver up to half-a-metre of snowfall.
It's the latest and potentially biggest yet in a series of storms over the past month that have set the country's ski resorts up well for the start of the 2023 season. Most centres already have 50-75% of their slopes open with several announcing they have all their lifts operating for the first time since the pre-pandemic 2019 season.
The new snowfall is being delivered by cold air arriving from the west, and comes as eastern Australia enters school holidays season. Initially though the weather across the New South Wales and Victorian Alps this weekend may not be to welcoming, with accompanying gale force winds of up to 100 kph expecting to mean blizzard conditions.
About half of the snowfall is expected to arrive during the most intense period of the storm through about 12 hours on Saturday, 8th July.
Snowfall levels are above average with upper slope depths of 60-80cm, now likely to go above the metre mark with the fresh snowfall.