Snow in the CBD: Melbourne’s most extreme weather events

Our city’s extreme weather has included snow in the CBD, winds tossing whole buildings in the air and the Yarra swelling to 300m wide.

As car engines across Melbourne choke to life in the winter morning, while excited kids lift crusts of ice from backyard birdbaths, it might be asked: has it ever been cold enough to snow in the middle of Melbourne?

The short answer is yes.

Amid a long a varied list of extreme weather events documented since Melbourne was founded, including tornadoes, epic floods and a cyclone in Brighton, a handful of snowstorms have been observed.

They include one time in 1882 when Melbourne’s CBD was brought to a standstill by a sudden dump of snow.

And according to the old colonists who witnessed the unusual event, it wasn’t the first time the town had turned white.

Cold snaps

It is definitely not normal for Melbourne to experience snowfall.

The vast land area around many cities in the northern hemisphere, including Europe and North America, means air moving over those places is cooler and snowfall is common.

Most built-up areas in Australia are closer to large oceans, which are warmer than land at the same level, meaning that air passing over Australian cities has an elevated temperature not conducive to snow.

But every now and then freak events can happen.

A newspaper cartoon of Melburnians reacting to snowfall in 1882. Picture: State Library of Victoria

One such occasion was Wednesday July 26, 1882 when two dumps of snow hit the Melbourne CBD, stunning the chilled townsfolk.

One newspaper noted at the time:

“The weather (on Tuesday) which had previously been fine but cold, suddenly changed, and all day a northwest wind blew, which, veering around to the seaward towards evening increased to tempestuous violence and was accompanied with terrific driving rain, which continued during the night.

“The thermometer fell to 37 degrees (2.8C) during the night, and did not rise above 40 degrees (4.4C) the whole of Wednesday …

“On Wednesday morning about eight o’clock, and again about half past 10 o’clock, Melbourne people enjoyed the rare sight of a fall of snow, the first which has occurred in Melbourne for nearly 30 years.”

Police arresting a snowman in Ballarat in the early 1900s. Picture: State Library of Victoria

Newspapers noted the yammering of old colonists who had arrived shortly after the foundation of the city some five decades earlier, and who distinctly remembered snow falling on the fledgling village at some point previous.

However, snow has been almost non existent in Melbourne ever since.

In 1933 an air force pilot flying over Melbourne encountered snow between 2000 and 3000 feet above the ground, but it never reached street level, instead melting and falling as rain.

There are scarce few other reports, most of which are unverified.

But snow has come multiple times to rural Victorian towns including Ballarat.

Photographs taken in the early 1900s show Sturt St covered with thick snow, around which time Ballarat police are seen ‘arresting’ a snowman they made in the street.

Early 20th Century photos also show the main street of Healesville under snow and the whole area around Olinda turned white.

Wild extremes

Snow isn’t the only wild weather Melbourne has endured.

In 1918 a cyclone-like storm – the strongest weather event of its kind ever recorded in Victoria – hit the Brighton area and lasted 30 minutes, tossing whole buildings in the air and uprooting trees.

Winds reached an astonishing 319 km/h.

The horror storm killed two people and caused damage topping 100,000 pounds.

In 1880 the largest flood ever recorded in Melbourne caused the Yarra to swell to more than 300m in width, causing home evacuations and killing at least one resident.

The extraordinary weather is not just a thing of the past.

In 2016 a freak thunderstorm asthma event across Melbourne resulted in six deaths.

The perfect storm of heat, humidity and grass growth caused a huge pollen influx that sparked countless asthma attacks and wreaked havoc on the health system.

A record fell in 2022 when Melbourne notched up 17 consecutive days that failed to creep above 15C.

It was the first time in more than a century the city had such a cold spell so early in the year.

Although recent temperatures have been too cold for comfort, Melbourne has seen chillier days.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in Melbourne was -2.8C in 1969.

The highest ever anecdotal temperature in Melbourne was 47.2C on February 6, 1851 when the Black Thursday bushfires swept across the state, killing a dozen people and hundreds of thousands of sheep and other livestock.

Originally published as Snow in the CBD: Melbourne’s most extreme weather events