Sydney's coldest June morning since 1949

Winter wonderland!

Forget the Gore Effect, here we have the “Watts Effect” – Anthony Watts comes to Australia and suddenly we’re setting records for cold! From the “Weather Isn’t Climate” department (except when we say it is):

People across south-east Australia are complaining about unusually chilly temperatures and experts say there will be no relief from the cold until Sunday at the earliest.

…

But ABC weather specialist Graham Creed says people’s complaints are justified.

“It’s definitely quite unusual to see such widespread cold weather in June, it would be more typical in July and August,” he said.

“So people are complaining about the cold for a good reason.”

Mr Creed says most areas across the south-east are experiencing temperatures well below average.

“Last weekend a cool change moved through and that introduced some significantly colder air across most of south-east Australia,” he said.

“Quickly in behind that we had a high pressure ridge move through, producing clear skies during both the day and the night, but it’s also helping to trap that cold air in.

“The clear skies mean we are losing what little daytime heating there is and overnight temperatures are dropping into the minuses through many of those states, producing widespread frosts.

“On top of that we’ve got quite a breeze in certain areas and the air is very dry so that’s producing very low wind chill, so not only is the sun not providing much warmth, you’ve also got the assistance of the wind making it feel colder than it actually is.”

…

Sydney recorded its coldest June morning today since 1949, with temperatures diving to 4.3 degrees just before 6:00am (AEST). (source)

That would be at Sydney Observatory. And in a pretty good demonstration of the Urban Heat Island effect, the ACM weather station (a Davis Vantage Pro 2) up on the North Shore of Sydney recorded a minimum temperature of just 0.4˚C at 7.40 am this morning.

Plot of temperature at the ACM weather station