Who else thought winter was over?
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Orange shivered through one of its coldest days on record on Saturday, with the apparent-temperature near minus 10 at points during the afternoon.
The city hovered around the 1 degree mark for most of Saturday and recorded a top temperature of 2.1 degrees Celcius in the early hours of the morning before snow fell around 3am.
Records started being taken at the Orange Airport in 1996 and in those 23 years a top temperature of 2.1 degrees has only been recorded one other time in July, 2000.
The top temperature of 2.1 is a record low for August though.
The previous lowest maximum temperature for this month was 2.4 degrees on August 11, 2008.
The already near-freezing day-time temperatures were made to feel abhorrently worse by a combination of wind and moisture in the air, with the feels-like temperature in Orange plummeting to minus 9.3 degrees at 3.25pm on Saturday afternoon.
The conditions on Sunday were equally chilling.
This is the coldest outbreak the south-east has seen this year.
- Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) duty forecaster Rohan Smyth.
The mercury didn't rise above 2.6 degrees, hitting that mark at 1.30pm before dropping back down to 0.5 degrees by 4pm.
Likewise, the wind-chill factor meant the day-time temperature on Sunday never crept higher than minus 4.6 degrees after lunchtime, making for one of the coldest weekends Orange has experience on record.
"This is the coldest outbreak the south-east has seen this year," Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) duty forecaster Rohan Smyth said.
The average day-time temperature for August is 11.2 degrees, both Saturday's and Sunday's tops fell well below that mark.
The snowy weather has brought with some welcome moisture as well, with 15.4 millimetres of precipitation - snow, sleet and rain combined - recorded over the weekend.
The BoM is predicting Monday's top temperature to still be below average, but at 8 degrees will prove a relatively balmy start to the working week.
Tuesday's maximum is predicted to be 9 degrees before the rest of the week gradually warms with next Saturday's top temperature set for 14 degrees.
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Nick McGrath
Editor, Central Western Daily
Editor, Central Western Daily
