Locals are shivering through a cold snap this week but it pales in comparison to some of the freezing conditions of yesteryear, including at least one day when it seemingly snowed on the Blackall Range.
The front page of the Nambour Chronicle on July 22, 1966, reported that the phenomenon occurred a few days earlier, on July 16, at 8.30am.
“Light snow fell at Witta, near Maleny, on Saturday morning,” it stated.
“Local residents say this was the first snow ever to fall in the area.”
The event lasted about 90 seconds and a long-time local, Mr A.H. Brooker, said he was shocked by it.
“I have seen snow before, and these were definite snowflakes,” he said. “It was quite thrilling to see.”
A Nambour golfer, Bob Burne, said a piece of ice almost an inch long fell to the ground near him as he left the sixth green. He assumed it had fallen from the wings of an airliner that had flown over minutes earlier.
Snow was evident in parts of southern Queensland at various times during the 1960s, especially in 1965, when it blanketed the Granite Belt.
But the Bureau of Meteorology has no official recording of snow on the range.
“At this stage there has been no official recording of snowfall on the Sunshine Coast in the past 70 years, including during the significant snow event in July 1965 that affected a broad swathe of inland southern and central Queensland,” a spokesperson said.
Some Sunshine Coast locations have recorded very low temperatures during the past few days.
The airport reached 3.1°C on Wednesday at 5.30am, when the apparent temperature (or feels like) dropped to -0.7°C.
But that’s nothing compared to a couple of historical cold spells.
The gauge read -4.7°C at Coolum Bowls Club on July 21, 1970, when it also dropped to -2.9 °C at Nambour.
It was a particularly cold winter that year, when a recording of -3.1°C was taken at the bowls club on July 6.
The temperature dropped below freezing (-0.7°C) at the airport on July 20, 2007, and, more recently, it slipped to 1.8°C at Beerburrum Forest Station on July 9, 2014.
The BOM spokesperson said there was only a very slight chance of snow appearing in the region in years to come.
“Some isolated snow flurries could not be ruled out at some stage in the future, especially across the more elevated terrain about the hinterland further inland,” the BOM spokesperson said.
“The influence of the coast would mean that snow to ground level here would be highly unlikely.
“The cold outbreaks tend to occur with drier westerlies over the south-east, which usually means they are devoid of moisture by the time they reach the coast, meaning it is too dry to support any kind of wintry precipitation.”
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