The Weather Guy: Thredbo’s Resident Meteorologist

This Week’s Forecast

The clear skies and settled conditions which we’ve been enjoying lately are set to continue thanks to a broad ridge of high pressure which has been the dominant feature over southeastern Australia. Throughout Wednesday, we can expect more of the same, with cloud building into Thursday and Friday. Despite this conditions should stay dry with generally light winds and the opportunity each night to fire up the snow guns.

The weekend is when things have the potential to become a bit more interesting. There has been a lot of talk around town in regards to a cold front which has been showing promising signs of snowfall on Sunday, but it looks as though it could go one of two ways.

Scenario A:

Once this cold front moves in from the Bight and over the mountains, it looks to clip Tasmania and southeastern parts of the mainland leading to a drop in temperatures and the outside chance of the odd flurry. Off this system we could expect 1-3cm falling as low as 1500m.

Scenario B:

Earlier models runs were hinting at a much more significant snow event, with over 10cm falling as low as 1500m, but with every model run it seems like the likelihood of this scenario actually happening is diminishing.

What’s the chance of these scenarios happening?

At this stage, unfortunately scenario A is the more likely scenario, and we rate at about 30% chance of seeing the odd dusting (1-3cm).

We obviously hope that the models revert back to their original forecast, but at the moment scenario B really only a 10% chance.

But as Lloyd Christmas says…

Be sure to keep a close eye on the forecast throughout the season so you can get the jump on the best conditions!

– Guy Dixon, former meteorologist at Weatherzone and Swellnet.

* In weather forecasting there is always a bit of a disclaimer: the situation can be subject to change. The way we do things at the forecast desk is look at a variety of weather models and hope to find some sort of agreement between them. That doesn’t always happen though… A lot of the time we have to work out which one is performing best and closely monitor its development. This season, I hope to display and demonstrate to you what we look for as forecasters!