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Winter 2023

June 19th

Light falls occured across the Oberon Plateau with about 3cm to 4cm at Shooters Hill. It started snowing on Monday night just after sunset up high on the OP and then a little later in Oberon Township where around 1cm or so accumulated. Snow also settled lightly on the hills around Lithgow and the upper Blue Mountains observed sleet in the evening. Sleet often gets mistaken for snow in the mountains but it is quite different by definition. Even if there are lots of snow flakes present but still rain, too, that is sleet.

May 7th and 8th

An impressive snowfall for early May. It wasn't a classic system as it primarly favoured the eastern side of the ranges due to its lack of low pressure for a lifting mechanism to produce snow clouds. The sounding indicated that it wasn't even that cold of an an air mass. So, how did it produce snow? A low formed in the Tasman and via southerly winds at 700hPa, it fed nice amounts of moisture into the quite cold lower level air which produced snow for places like the Oberon Plateau and even some of the highest spots in the Southern Highlands like Robertson. The sounding indicated only -7C at 700hPa and about -22C at 500hPa but it was cold enough at 850hPa to produce nice snow above 1200M on the Oberon Plateau, up to 9cm at the Shooters Hill Cemetery. More will be added to this report as time permits. Blackheath only saw snow showers, graupel and sleet as Sunday unfolded. No real settling here as we lacked enough moisture.