At this time of year, certain weather stations are heavily watched by weather-lovers who crave more than a sun or cloud icon for their daily weather fix.

Snow lovers in particular have their favourite stations as well as their favourite weather radars – but interestingly, not all of them are in the mountains.

For example, the Yarrawonga radar (centred on the Murray River, about 90 km west of Albury-Wodonga) is much-favoured by those seeking a bird's eye view of precipitation heading the way of the Victorian Alps and Snowy Mountains of New South Wales.

There's also a weather station at Mount William in the Grampians which snow-lovers turn to in hope of seeing snow fall where it counts, and here's why.

The Grampians are a stunning mountain range in Victoria's Wimmera region. They're a long way from the snowfields – a good 400 km or so as the crow flies – and they're not as high as the Vic Alps either.

But the summit of Mount William is high enough at 1167 metres to get semi-regular snowflakes in winter.

RT @visitgrampians: Its Official snow on top of Mt William Grampians pic.twitter.com/ohybZ64Szd

— Melbourne, Australia (@Melbourne) May 13, 2015

And the weather station is definitely high enough (at 1150 m) to record some chilly temps that point to cold air heading east.

See the live temps below at 4 pm on Thursday as we write this story? Mount William is the small dark blue 2 (°C) on the centre left of the image. By any measure, 2 °C is a chilly afternoon temp for western Victoria, even if it's a mountain.

The dark blue readings to the right of the image are the alpine weather stations. Often the alpine weather stations will be warmer than Mount William, but that's precisely why snow-lovers watch Mount William like hawks.

Assuming a clastic winter westerly flow is in place, they know that when temps drop dramatically there, the cold airmass should hit the snowfields within half a day or so – depending on the wind speed at higher elevations.

So there's a hot tip for you this winter if you're a snow-lover. If Mount William's temp is dropping, your chances of decent snow are rising dramatically.

Or as one Weatherzone reader rather poetically told us:

"Mount William is the official, unofficial elevated snow lighthouse guiding Huey into the harbour. I don't mind what anyone says, Mount William is that first fat kid to the lolly bag."

For the record, you can drive on a sealed road almost all the way to the top of Mount William. The views over the Grampians and to the farmland more than 800 (vertical) metres below will knock your socks off.

There's also a new trail, opened late last year, called the Grampians Peaks Trail, which covers 160 km in Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park that takes up to 13 days to complete, depending on your speed. 

ON A SIMILAR THEME: MT GININI, ACT – Australia's loneliest little mountain weather station