Australia Weather News

An isolated town in Tasmania's Central Highlands region was the coldest populated place in Australia on Thursday.

Liawenee, with a permanent population of two, recorded an overnight temperature of -12.9 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, which was trumped on Thursday with -13.5C — the coldest temperature recorded in Australia this year, according to the BOM.

Thursday's mercury reading was also the second-coldest temperature ever recorded in Tasmania.

The former Hydro town, which counts a duty officer at the local police station and an Inland Fisheries Service Tasmania staff member as its permanent residents, holds the state record as the location with the lowest-recorded temperature, having reached -14.2C in August 2020.

Images capture beauty of clear, icy conditions

Lakes have frozen over with inch-thick ice in the region as a high pressure system causing clear skies, light winds and very dry surface air bring icy cold nights.

Tasmanian photographer Gill Dayton was up early to capture the silent, snow-covered scene.

In a social media post, she wrote: "A wee bit chilly this morning."

"The Central Highlands looked so beautiful, frost clinging to all surfaces, trees appearing like they had white sparkly blossoms.

"Lakes frozen over, swans finding melted patches in-between fog, a glittering white landscape."

The early winter scene has also been captured on webcams in the remote area.

At Little Pine Lagoon, located about halfway between Launceston and Hobart in the Highlands Lakes district, a webcam operated by the Anglers Alliance Tasmania showed ice covering parts of the lagoon.

Nearby Lake Augusta was almost entirely frozen over.

The highlands area, which is spotted in lakes is known as a world-class fly fishing location, and is one of Australia's largest natural freshwater lake systems.

[IMAGE: map Lake Augusta] 

Trees 'looked like they'd been dipped in icing sugar'

As the managing director at the Great Lakes' Miena Village, James Johns is very familiar with the region's "wild" and "woolly" weather.

He said that was what made the area so special.

"For seven months of the year, you're basically in either a state of it being cold or wet or snowy, and it's just life," Mr Johns said.

"This morning… all of the gum trees were dusted with snow. It looked like they'd been dipped in icing sugar.

"It was just a wonderful way to wake up."

He said the weather had taken a toll on some of the accommodation, with several water pipes having frozen, thawed and then burst. He said they were now being fixed.

"It's just a magnificent place to be," he said.

"This morning we woke up and it'll be a completely different environment this afternoon."

Liawenee the holder of state temperature record

In a ranking of Tasmania's lowest recorded temperatures since 1972, Liawenee is mentioned three times: twice in 2020 at -14.C on August 7, and -11.7C on August 10, then again in July 2013 when the area reached -12.2C.

Thursday's mercury reading of -13.5C is the result of a ridge of high pressure sitting over the state with clear skies, which has allowed heat to escape into the atmosphere.

On Wednesday, Mr Thomas speaking on ABC Radio Hobart predicted there was a chance the mercury in the town could fall even further.

"Yesterday, a bit of fog that formed on Great Lake that might just be wafting closer to Liawenee at times, was raising the temperature ever so slightly at times," he said.

"As the fog wafts away, the temperature might fall, but it’s been going up and down by about a degree or two over the past three hours."

Across Tasmania it made it down to -4C at Fingal and Cressy in the state's north-east; -3C at Launceston, Launceston Airport in the north and -2C at Sheffield, Smithton in the north-west; Flinders Island also reached -2C.

Mr Thomas said that in June 1983, three Tasmanian locations hit -13C at the same time, Taraleah Village, Butlers Gorge and Shannon Hydroelectric, which until Wednesday was the second-coldest temperature recorded in the state.

Thursday was a day of weather extremes, with the weather station at Sheffield in Tasmania reporting a pressure of above 1044.3 hectopascals. If confirmed it beats the previous Australian record from 1967.

The abnormal pressure is having a significant impact on the nation's weather, including extreme low overnight temperatures over south-east states and a lengthy stretch of showery days along the eastern seaboard.