Time to dig out those woollen scarves and gloves if you haven't needed them so far this winter – twin fronts will deliver a large cold air mass over south-eastern Australia, including Sydney, over the next few days.
The first of the fronts should arrive on Thursday and another on Sunday, making conditions in the city feel cold for the better part of a week, Kim Westcott, a meteorologist with Weatherzone, said.
For Sydney, overnight temperatures are expected to drop to 6 degrees on Thursday and dip to 7 each morning after that until Monday. Temperatures at sites such as Richmond are forecast to drop as low as 1 degree on Saturday and Sunday.
Daily maximums will struggle to top 17 degrees most days until early next week, with 16 degrees on Thursday and Friday the coolest of the current spell, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Wind chill will make conditions feel several degrees cooler but there will be little chance of more than the odd shower during the coming week for Sydney.
The cold fronts, though, are unlikely to bring much in the way of fresh snow to key alpine resorts in NSW and Victoria desperate for more of the white stuff.
"It'll be very little when this big front comes through on Thursday – only a few centimetres at most," Ms Westcott said.
The second front should help top up any falls but it is unlikely to bring a repeat of the 30-centimetre dump that got the ski season off to a good start at the end of May, she said.
Snow cams at the main sites show that the snow guns have made the most of sub-zero temperatures to provide a cover for a minority of the runs at most sites.
One sign of the paucity of snow can be seen at Spencers Creek, near Charlotte Pass, where it is expected that there will be no snow cover at the start of July for the first time since 1957 - the first year observations began at the site.
Large high-pressure systems have sat over Victoria for much of June, pushing cold fronts – and their moisture – further south, Ms Westcott said, adding that Melbourne had its driest June since 2009.
Sydney's rainfall of 110.6mm has been about 20 per cent below average for the month – with more than half the rain falling on one day, Friday, June 19.
For the first half of 2015, Sydney's rainfall totals about 877mm, or about 20 per cent above the long-run average for the period of almost 729mm.
Temperatures in the city have extended their above-average run, with maximums in June about 1.6 degrees above the norm.
Overnight temperatures in June were about 0.7 degrees above normal, Ms Westcott said.
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