It snows (a very small amount, and a couple of times a decade) in the city of Santiago, Chile (pop. 5M) - most recently in August 2011.
It frequently snows in Punta Arenas, in southern Chile. With 120,000 inhabitants, it’s the largest city south of the 46th parallel (it’s at 53° south). It’s on the coast, so it’s not particularly cold there, but it is extremely windy.
Portillo, a ski resort in the Andes, gets 25 ft. of snow a year (but it isn’t a city).
It’s difficult for the world to understand there is MORE to Arizona than Phoenix. Hell, even the TV stations here center everything on Phoenix, and the rest of the state gets a mere nod, if that.
We’re in NE AZ, at 5500 feet. The snow doesn’t hang around much, but Brother, we do get it. And we get WINDS, which can be colder than the snow. We use a wood stove for heat, and we absolutely NEED it.
I was raised in SCal. We used heat in the winter, but the Flatlanders also would go “visit” the higher elevations to experience the snow. You stay long enough to accumulate snow on the car, and everyone gets wet, cold, and miserable, and then you go home.
In SCal, there are SKI RESORTS.
There’s a lot more to California than just Malibu.
~VOW
I wouldn’t say “common” - some high mountains get regular snow in winter, yes (mostly crappy levels, though - not enough for a decent snowman, never mind skiing or anything like that) but that’s all outside any major towns. If it snows in a city it’s major news - this last year was a record-breaker.
Last year in Queenstown, New Zealand. A little late but welcomed nonetheless.
Sorry to nitpick, but do you mean Invercargill? AFAIK Inverness is one of the few placenames we didn’t import.
It snowed in the centre of Queenstown when I was there, too.
Ja, the only South African towns I can think of that might get regular snow are the ones in the Cape Drakensberg, like Barkly East, Lady Grey, Herschel or Sterkspruit. Certainly none of them are major towns.
My last visit to Northern California in winter will be my last, for this very reason.
It was 50 degrees outside. That’s not too bad. It was 50-60 INSIDE, everywhere, and that’s awful. At night the house I was staying in got down to 50-55, wiytout fail. It was like I was camping. It might be as cold as hell here in winter, but it’s cold outside; right now it’s close to freezing outdoors but a toasty 70 indoors. In California, it was cold everywhere; everyone seemed terrified of turning on the heat, in part because nobody’s house was insulated so it would have cost them a kidney to heat the house properly.
Just wanted to add my own experience to those thinking it rarely snows in the Southern Hemisphere.
I spent my childhood in Ferntree, Hobart, which was partly up the side of Mt Wellington. Every winter we would have at least a few snow days where the roads were unpassable, and we’d spend the day boogey-boarding down the neighbour’s driveway. There would also be many weeks where we could drive to the top of the mountain, and dig into snow drifts where the snow was deep blue.
I have lived in Canberra, where there is a popular ski resort a few hours away (Perisher Blue). I now live in Bathurst, where it snowed nearby in several places this winter (the road through the Blue Mountains was closed for a few days). Also, a few years ago, it snowed in Oberon (an hour from here) during CHRISTMAS. This may not seem remarkable to you, but our Christmas is in the middle of summer. Same as if it snowed in June in the Northern Hemisphere.
I visited Tasmania in the middle of the southern summer (January). I was hiking in Mount Field national park in glorious sunshine, and came across an entry in the visitor book in a hut, dated only five or six days before my visit, saying people were sheltering from a snowstorm! So snow in summer is clearly not unheard of, at least at higher altitudes.
Why does that happen? Why can’t they just put Antarctica in proportion like all the other bits?
Technically yes, but because there is more landmass in the northern hemisphere and the landmass extends much further north than the southern landmasses extend south, the result is that a greater number of northern hemisphere countries are out of proportion compared to the southern hemisphere. (Or in other words, most of what is getting stretched in the south is water.)
The other bits aren’t in proportion either, and it happens because you can’t accurately project the surface of a sphere on to a flat plate.
The Mercator projection represents rhumb lines (lines of constant bearing) as straight lines, so it was historically useful for navigation, but to do that it distorts scale. As you get further from the equator, so the scale increases, to the point where at the poles the scale is infinite. You can’t fit Antarctica on the map because by the time you get to the South Pole it will be actual size. 
While someone that lives in NY, especially upstate, might find 57 not to bad and might even wear a t-shirt, if you live in south Florida where it’s 80+ 9-10 months out of the year, you build up a tolerance for warm and find 57 cold. I come from CT and will wear shorts and t-shirts down to about 60, when it goes below, especially with the constant wind here, I will put on pants and a jacket and turn on the heat. We don’t have more than a few days at a time below 60, but it does get into the 30s rarely.
What longitude is the southern point in Australia compared to northern cities? The polar maps I looked at showed huge swaths of Canada, Scandinavia and Russia in the north, but only a tiny piece of South America on the southern map.
There’s not really a standard on “t-shirt/shorts” weather either. I live in the Richmond, VA area, and we mostly have what I’d call “real, but mild” winters. We usually get some snow accumulation and the average low temperature is below freezing for Dec/Jan/Feb, and below 40 for Nov/Mar. [This is nothing to places further North where I’ve lived, where you can go weeks on end with the high temp for the day never going above freezing.]
Some people here are very sensitive to cold and you’ll see them bundled up when it’s below 50 at any point in the day. For me unless it’s actually freezing when I get up in the morning I’m unlikely to wear a coat unless I know from a weather forecast inclement weather later in the day would require it. So on colder months here where it might be say, 40 F when I wake up I’m fine getting in my car and driving to work in just “normal” clothes, no jacket. A few minutes in 40 F doesn’t bother me at all and later in the day it’ll be 60+ and I’ll be glad I have no jacket.
Around my yard/house I’m also perfectly comfortable walking to the mailbox or working in the yard in shorts and a t-shirt for 15-20 minutes at a time in 50-60 F weather wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I wouldn’t go longer than that. But I know people around here that think I’m crazy for even wearing shorts at all from the months of October to April. So some people really need it to be very warm to wear shorts (like 75 F +) and some like me will be wearing shorts at 55 F on some days.
You mean latitude I guess. Hobart, Australia’s most southern city, is at 42ºS which is closer to the equator than all of Canada and Alaska and much of Europe.
This Wiki page helps visualize Southern Hemisphere latitudes compared to Northern: Antipodes - Wikipedia
That’s pretty cool.
Snowed briefly in Canberra today, the usual quick melting stuff, first time since this thread was created I think.
Depends on your definition of “get” and your definition of “snow” I guess (and your definition of city as well)
3 or 4 times this winter Christchurch has had snow settle on the ground…
Further South (Queenstown and Dunedin, Oamaru) will be guaranteed of snow every year, although not really sure they qualify as “cities”.
No he meant that no one has yet built a ski resort at Antarctica.
I guess he meant to say "you can of course ski in alpine areas at six continents, And Antarctica is just one big low altitude ski field, not alpine but it will do ! ".
Here’s the ski report for Chile.