Unseasonably cold temperatures sent shivers across southeastern Australia on Wednesday morning, with Canberra one of many places that registered their coldest November morning on record.

A frigid air mass lingering in the wake of a cold front combined with relatively light winds and clear skies on Tuesday night to send temperatures plummeting across southeastern Australia.

Image: Satellite images showing the cold front pushing north along Australia’s east coast on Wednesday morning.

By the early hours of Wednesday, temperatures had plunged around 10 to 12°C below average for a November morning, with parts of Vic, NSW, the ACT and SA registering their lowest November temperatures on record.

Image: Modelled temperature anomaly over Australia at 5am AEDT on Wednesday, November 12, 2025. The darker blue and pink shading over southeastern Australia shows that temperatures were about 6 to 12°C below average for this time of year. Source: TropicalTidbits.com

Canberra’s minimum of -2.3°C early on Wednesday was about 12°C below average and the city’s lowest November temperature on record, beating its previous November record of -1.8°C from 1967. This was cold enough for frost to form.

Wednesday morning’s wintry chill also produced new November daily minimum temperature records in:

• Orange, NSW: -2.0°C (previous record -1.7°C)
• Mudgee, NSW: -0.1°C (previous record 0.2°C)
• Wangaratta, Vic: -1.3°C (previous record 0.1°C)
• Renmark, SA: 1.9°C (previous record 2.3°C)

Mildura also had its coldest November morning since 1912 after the mercury dipped to 1.6°C shortly before 7am on Wednesday.

Looking ahead, a series of cold fronts will continue to bring periods of abnormally cold weather in parts of southern and southeastern Australia over the coming week. These fronts will help prevent any extreme late-spring heat in the country’s south through the middle of November.