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High pressure will dominate the weather over much of central and southeastern Australia with cold nights persisting under clear skies. Onshore winds will bring a few showers to coastal Qld, especially in the north. An approaching cold front will bring rain to western WA.
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Today, 2:06AM UTC
Australia’s coldest place this Wednesday is just 100km from Queensland
Wednesday was another chilly winter morning across a large part of Australia, but one town was colder than anywhere else, and most people won’t pick where. It wasn’t in the mainland alpine region or nearby valleys, although Falls Creek (Vic) fell to –5.8°C with Thredbo Top Station (NSW) recording –5.3°C while Canberra (ACT) endured a frigid –5.1°C after a brief break on Tuesday in its prolonged run of frosty mornings. Nor was Wednesday morning’s coldest temperature in Tasmania. The statewide minimum was –2.4°C on kunanyi/Mt Wellington above Hobart, with some other typically chilly spots barely falling below zero due to strong overnight winds preventing cold air settling. (For example, Liawenee, which recorded a night of –12.9°C last year, was –0.4°C this morning). The coldest place in Australia this Wednesday morning, June 18, 2025? Glen Innes on the NSW Northern Tablelands, just 100km south of the Queensland border, where last night’s minimum was –6.7°C. The 8000 residents of the town and nearby areas have endured quite the frosty run over the past week, with lows of –6.1°C, –6.5°C, –4.1°C, –4.8°C, –5.0°C and –3.6°C before last night’s low, which was the coldest to date in 2025. But last night was far from the coldest temperature on record in town. Nights of –12.8°C have been recorded in both July and August at the Glen Innes Airport weather station (the town’s official station which has operated since 1996). In 2023, Glen Innes recorded a night of –10.8°C and while that wasn’t a record, it was still the coldest temperature recorded anywhere in Australia that year. Image: The surrounding hills rise just high enough above Glen Innes to make cold air pool in town. Source: iStock/Robert Latham. So why are nights so cold in Glen Innes? Two main factors are at play: climate and topography. In terms of climate, Glen Innes tends to have dry days with cloudless nights in winter. The months from May to August are by far the driest time of year, with the colder months seeing around a third (or slightly less) of the rainfall in the town’s wettest months of November and December. In terms of topography, the town is high and cold at an elevation around 1060m, while the airport weather station is at 1044m. But the town sits in a gentle, saucer-shaped valley, with the surrounding hills reaching up to 1300m and the nearby high point of Ben Lomond topping 1500m (not to be confused with the Tasmanian ski resort Ben Lomond). Cold air is denser than warmer air, so on still nights, the cold air pools in the valley around the town of Glen Innes, where the air is already relatively chilly due to the elevation. The good news for locals is that even after frigid winter nights, you often get a relatively mild maximum in the mid-teens, and that will be the case this Wednesday. Night-time temperatures will also start to moderate this week due to a slightly moister easterly influence in the general weather pattern.
17 Jun 2025, 11:53PM UTC
Australia enters darkest week of the year
The seven days from now until next Tuesday will be the darkest week of the year across Australia. The Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice will occur on Saturday, June 21, marking Australia’s shortest day and longest night of the year based on sunlight hours. Counting the three days on either side of the solstice date gives you the seven-day period with the least amount of daylight during the year. Australia’s darkest week of 2025 will run from Wednesday, June 18 to Tuesday, June 21. What is the winter solstice? The winter solstice marks the date on which Earth’s Northern or Southern Hemisphere reaches its furthest tilt away from the Sun. Each hemisphere has a winter solstice spaced half a year apart. The Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice occurs in late June and the Northern Hemisphere’s winter solstice occurs in late December. When the Southern Hemisphere reaches its winter solstice, the Sun appears to be at its lowest point in the sky when viewed from south of Earth’s equator. This is also the shortest day of the year based on time between sunrise and sunset. The table below shows the daylength for Australia’s capital cities on this year’s winter solstice. Image: Daylength for Australia's capital cities on the date of the 2025 winter solstice. Following the winter solstice on Saturday, days will start to become longer, and nights will become shorter across Australia. This trend will continue for six months until the Southern Hemisphere’s summer solstice on December 21-22.
17 Jun 2025, 3:29AM UTC
Fortnight of frosty mornings in Canberra
Canberra has enjoyed a brief break from an ongoing run of freezing mornings, but temperatures will plummet again from tomorrow. Repetitive intrusions of cold air from the Southern Ocean have caused outbreaks of wintry weather across southeastern Australia over the last couple weeks. A particularly cold few days over the King’s Birthday long weekend saw snow falling across parts of Victoria, Tasmania, NSW and the ACT. Since that long weekend cold snap, large areas of southeastern Australia have experienced clearer skies and lighter winds associated with a slow-moving high pressure system. These conditions have been ideal for overnight cooling leading to frosty minimum temperatures. Canberra’s minimums have dropped below 0°C on 15 of the last 20 mornings, including a 7-day stretch up to Monday this week: June 10: -1.6°C June 11: -3.7°C June 12: -4.6°C June 13: -5.5°C June 14: -4.1°C June 15: -1.0°C June 16: -1.5°C This prolonged stretch of frosty nights was interrupted briefly on Monday night into Tuesday morning as increased wind and cloud only allowed the temperature to drop to 3.9°C. However, this respite from the cold mornings won’t last long, with temperatures set to dive below 0°C once again for the rest of this week. Canberra is forecast to register another five mornings below 0°C between Wednesday and Sunday, which will make it 12 out of 13 days in a row below zero. The coldest mornings will be Thursday and Friday, when the mercury is predicted to reach -4°C but could go lower, particularly on Thursday. Image: Forecast minimum temperature over southeastern Australia on Thursday, June 19, 2025. This week’s cold mornings will take Canberra’s tally of sub-zero minimums to 17 by Sunday, which is above the long-term average of 13 for the whole month of June. Canberra’s longest run of consecutive minimums below 0°C was 22 days from late May until the middle of June of 1957.