Cold temperatures across southeast Australia dip as low as minus 16. Brrr

AUSTRALIA, you just shivered your way through one of the truly freezing nights. You’ll be totally gobsmacked to learn just how cold.

Icicles hang from a chain link fence outside a nursery Monday, Jan. 11, 2010 in Plant City, Fla. Another blast of sub-freezing temperatures hit the area over night. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

RECKON it was chilly last night in your neck of the woods?

Well you weren’t at Charlotte Pass, the tiny NSW ski village nestled in a valley near our nation’s highest peak, Mt Kosciuszko.

Around dawn today at “The Pass”, as locals call it, the mercury bottomed out at a frosty minus 16 degrees. Yes, minus 16.

“Coming back from the pub last night it was definitely freezing,” Alli Schneider, manager of Southern Alps Ski Club lodge, told news.com.au. “Luckily we’ve got central heating in the lodge.”

When Charlotte Pass locals say it’s cold, you know it’s cold. The small community with five ski lifts holds the record for Australia’s lowest temperature (not including Antarctic territories).

That record was set on the evening of June 29, 1994, when the mercury plummeted to minus 23 degrees. Yes, minus 23. Interestingly, that’s a colder official temperature than has ever been recorded in New Zealand, although that’s only because New Zealand has fewer weather stations than Australia.

Meanwhile, much of southeast Australia had a double doona sort of night last night.

There was frost in the suburbs of Melbourne, with a temperature of exactly zero degrees recorded at Tullamarine Airport. Canberra dipped to minus 6, Adelaide had barely 3 degrees for the second night in a row, while even Sydney shivered its way through a night of 5 degrees, with subzero temperatures in the west.

The frosty extremes come in the wake of a strong cold front which crossed the southeast on Friday. Frigid night-time temperatures typically follow those systems, as dry air holds less heat than moist air.

Towns and suburbs located in valleys tend to be coldest under the sort of conditions we saw last night, as cold air, which is denser or heavier than warm air, sinks to valleys. That’s why Charlotte Pass had minus 16 while nearby Thredbo had a positively balmy minus 11. Thredbo’s official weather station is located on top of the hill, not at the bottom like the station at Charlotte Pass.

The good news is, sunny days tend to follow these sort of cold nights. That’s why Alli Schneider is hanging out in her T-shirt at Charlotte Pass this morning after the coldest night to date of winter 2014.

Alli Schneider, lodge manager at Southern Alps Ski Club lodge, catches a few rays among the snowgums after a night of minus 16 at Charlotte Pass. As you do.

If she can do it, so can you. So for god’s sake stop reading the internet and go for a frolic in the winter sunshine. And that’s an order.