Parts of eastern Australia just shivered through their coldest June morning in years as sub-freezing temperatures caused widespread frost across NSW and Qld.

A wintry combination of clear skies, light winds and a lingering cold air mass caused temperatures to plummet across eastern Australia on Thursday night into Friday morning.

Image: Modelled daily minimum temperature on Friday, June 16, 2023, according to the ECMWF-HRES model.

In Qld, there were 13 official weather stations that dropped below 0ºC, including Roma (-1ºC), Amberley (-1.5ºC), Warwick (-3.4ºC) and Wellcamp Airport (-3.6ºC). These were the coldest June mornings in five and nine years for Warwick and Amberley, respectively.

The coldest place in Qld on Friday morning was Oakey, where the temperature reached -4.0ºC shortly before 7:00 am. This was the state’s lowest June temperature since 2019.

Across the border in NSW and the ACT, a whopping 34 weather stations reached 0ºC or lower in the early hours of Friday, including -1.7ºC at Dubbo, -2.7ºC at Mudgee and -6.4ºC in Armidale. The lowest temperature in the state on Friday morning was -7.7ºC at Glen Innes, which is the 2nd lowest temperature observed anywhere in Australia so far this winter.

Looking ahead, more widespread frost will form over eastern and central Australia on Saturday morning under the influence of a slow-moving high pressure system.