Aussie Dopers: let me know if you need any pro tips on the snow

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6855844

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/australian-towns-blanketed-with-rare-snow-wild-weather-2025-08-03/

40 cm. That’s a respectable snowfall even by Saskatchewan standards. :snowflake::snowman::snowflake:

Better than drought or fires, anyway!

Sydney is about 7 hours by road south of Guyra (well, maybe a bit longer at the moment :upside_down_face:), so apart from it being a miserably cold and wet weekend here, we didn’t get that flurry of excitement.

Tourists travelling from the Brisbane hinterland on impulse to see the sights have found that black ice is not a myth. Doubt many would carry or even know how to fit chains.

There was a report some primary school pupils (as a prank) were wearing tennis rackets as improvised snow shoes on Monday.

Guyra in the Northern Tablelands is one of the country’s highest towns outside the ski fields (which are in the state’s south) @ 1,330 meters (4,364 feet) above sea level. Snow isn’t unusual there, but mostly “light dustings”; for it to persist and build drifts is.

Not sure what you should do in these conditions … but this is what some of the local nutters are doing:

Heh. My sister and BIL (he’s Australian) lived in Perth for about a dozen years, before moving back to Canada.

Apparently, Perth experienced lower than expected temps one night. There was frost on the windshield of BIL’s ute. He had no idea what to do when he was off to work, and asked Sis, who took a look.

“Oh, fer crissake, it’s only frost,” Sis reportedly said. “Just scrape it off.”

“How?”

“Jesus H. Mahogany Christ and a half. Lemme show you.” And Sis took a kitchen spatula, and scraped the frost off the windshield. When she was done, she said, “That’s how.” Fun story, still retold at family gatherings.

Sis, like me, has a colourful vocabulary, when the occasion calls for it. Thanks, Dad!

The reaction to a bit of snow in areas that don’t normally get any is often amusing. I was visiting a couple in Vancouver one time who had moved there from Ontario. One day there was a snowfall that deposited about a centimeter on the ground. The husband having taken the car, the female used a bus to get somewhere, and asked the bus driver how long it would take to get to some destination. She later cheerfully recounted how the bus driver qualified his answer with the comment “if we ever make it up this hill”! As if they were in the midst of a natural disaster, and possibly everyone was gonna die!

The serious side of things is that drivers unaccustomed to snow and ice have no idea how to handle it, and their cars are normally unequipped for it, so it really can be dangerous for them.

Heh! You know Toronto, so I’m sure you know York Mills Road eastbound, out of Hogg’s Hollow. I used to take the York Mills 95 bus from York Mills subway. On occasion, on bad winter days, and especially if the bus was fully loaded, the driver would say, “Folks, I don’t know if we can get up the hill. Any volunteers willing to walk up? I’ll meet you at the top.”

Well, the lightened bus did make it, tires sliding, and the driver always waited for those of us trudging up the hill. Maybe not strictly in accordance with the rules of the TTC, but the bus got to where it was going, and so did we.

I had that happen to me once, on a visit to TO.

At least the driver didn’t ask us to get out and push!

My wife didn’t have her snow tires on yet and was having trouble getting up a steeply sloping street in fresh snow a few years ago (Pleasant Park off Riverside, if you know Ottawa), and a bus came up behind her and gently helped her to the top.