A strong cold front produced a cold outbreak in south-east Australia for several days from Wednesday 7 August 2019, bringing damaging winds, squally showers and storms. Strong winds temporarily grounded flights in Sydney and Melbourne, and led to hundreds of calls to emergency services across New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (VIC) and South Australia (SA).
The cold outbreak also brought widespread heavy snow to many elevated areas in New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory.
Victoria
On 9 August in VIC’s West and South Gippsland and the coastal south-west, sustained winds of 90–110 kilometres per hour (km/h) were experienced, with gusts of 128 km/h recorded at Wilsons Promontory and 120 km/h at Cape Otway.
A woman died that morning in the Yarra Ranges when a gumtree fell onto a car she was travelling in on the Maroondah Highway; three other occupants of the car were hospitalised. On the Mornington Peninsula, the end of the Frankston pier broke from its moorings and drifted across the bay.
By 6.00pm that evening, the VIC State Emergency Services (SES) had received more than 600 requests for assistance in the previous 24 hours, mostly due to fallen trees and some building damage, and more than 45 domestic flights had been cancelled at Melbourne Airport.
Widespread snow fell to lower levels in Victoria, including at Mt Macedon and in the Dandenong Ranges. For Victoria this was the most widespread low level snowfall since 2008.
Disaster recovery assistance for counter disaster operations and the restoration of essential public assets was made available from the Australian and state governments in the Victorian local government areas of Banyule, Glen Eira and Hobsons Bay.
New South Wales
In NSW, the SES received 1,404 requests for assistance, mostly from the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra region. In Stockton near Newcastle, gale-force winds ripped the roof from an aged care facility; nobody was hurt.
Winds at Thredbo in the Australian Alps gusted to 118 km/h at 3.50am on Friday, and Albion Park south of Wollongong recorded 100 km/h and Bellambi to Wollongong’s north 93 km/h. The strong winds caused more than 180 domestic flights at Sydney Airport to be cancelled by 6.00pm that evening.
Moderate snowfalls occurred in the NSW highlands, with snow settling at many locations above about 600 metres on 10 and 11 August, including Orange, Guyra, Lithgow, the Barrington Tops, the Blue Mountains, and in the Australian Capital Territory.
Australian Capital Territory
In Canberra on the Friday night, snow fell on an Australian Football League (AFL) game between Hawthorn and Greater Western Sydney, the first time in history that snow had fallen on an AFL match.
South Australia
In SA, storms on 8 August brought severe winds and localised flooding to the Adelaide Hills, with power blackouts affecting more than 8,500 properties across the state. McLaren Vale had its highest August daily rainfall on record. Conditions eased early the following morning, but more than 5,500 customers remained without power.
The cold front brought strong wind gusts with the highest reading of 120 km/h recorded on Neptune Island. Wind gusts of 104 km/h were recorded at Hindmarsh Island, 98 km/h at Mount Gambier, 95 km/h at Point Avoid, and 93 km/h at Port Lincoln.
At Mount Barker, a police officer entered a fast-flowing creek on the Thursday night to rescue a woman clinging to a tree branch after she fell in while checking on stock. She was rescued by the police officer with the help of her husband.
SA’s SES received about 340 calls for assistance in 24 hours from Thursday into Friday.