No, this is not a particularly extraordinary interval of snowy weather. That’s not even in Queensland (2015 just made it to “1” on this 140-year graph from Nick at Queensland Snow):
Snow days per year in South-East Queensland, from Queensland Snow via Weather Armidale
In fact we just poked our heads above the snow depth trace for our worst season on record, 2006. Lets hope we can stay there:
Recorded snow depth at Spencers Creek, midway between Perisher Valley and Thredbo, NSW, from Snowy Hydro
Probably we can — this week at least — with 15 cm of new snow overnight at Perisher Valley*. It looks like there won’t be a lot more before the next measure next Thursday, so with melt and consolidation, a small positive net gain for the week may be a likely outcome. Unfortunately the next weather system is now likely to be more wet than white, but it could still surprise.
(* Thredbo claimed 30 cm … no, I not going to comment, except to note that the top of “The Cruiser” at Merritts and the bottom of the Eyre T-bar on Mount Perisher are just 11.6 km apart.)
What do you mean when you say, “2015 just made it to 1”? Are you talking about snow days? There’s plenty of photos showing snow at Stanthorpe on Monday, aswell as the major Friday fall.
Yep, the chart shows “snow days” compiled mainly from a century and a half of newspaper reports; a herculean task. I thought Friday was predominantly NSW; happy to be corrected, as always.
Take a look at 1982 v 2006 for Spencers. The area under the graph is neck and neck despite 82 having a slightly higher peak. But if you look at Deep Ck and 3 Mile Dam then 06 wins as the worst hands down. Cheers…. Warrie
Yeah, 2006 is worst on the peak (and maybe extent, as you point out). Worst on the integral is 1982 (9.1 m.weeks), then 1973 (9.4), followed by 2006 (9.7):
(For convenience I do the integrals off the Thursday interpolated record; the raw data may give slightly different numbers.)