QLD: Cold wet weather contracts to the east. Yesterday's cold, wet spell that spanned much of tropical AUS contracted into inland and northern QLD today before clearing. Duneira and Drensmaine in the Central Highlands doubled their previous June rainfall records, while Musgrave on Cape York Peninsula equalled its lowest maximum temperature in a 17 year history at 22.4C.

Click image for animation. With the low centred near Nowra, rain begins to wrap around its southern flank, returning northwards through Canberra. It turns to heavy snow as it moves west across high ranges in the Michelago area south of Canberra.

NSW: Fourth East Coast Low brings rain, freak snowfall. A trough that developed on the SE QLD coast yesterday morning spawned centres off the NSW North Coast and northwest of Sydney early this morning, and by mid afternoon a dominant centre had formed off the coast near Sydney and was moving south and deepening. By late evening, a second low had formed off the NSW North Coast and was moving SE.

The coastal developments were in response to a deep eastward-moving upper trough that lay along the NSW/SA border late this morning. This trough had sharpened yesterday, bringing a large blob of cold air northwards up its western side. As the trough moved east today, it developed into a cut-off low over western VIC which moved to central western NSW late this evening. This upper low and cold pool reached the coast overnight into Wednesday, dramatically intensifying the coastal trough and its pair of nested lows. Extreme rain and flooding resulted in eastern VIC and widespread snow in NSW (see stories 27 June).

Today, the trough brought moderate to heavy rain from the Gold Coast south to around Port Macquarie overnight, and by 9am many locations on the North and Mid North Coasts had recorded 50 to 100mm (see wettest). Moderate rain began falling the full length of the coast during the morning, and with good falls penetrating into the tablelands. Goulburn -- which has achieved notoriety for its drought-induced near-empty dams and level 5 water restrictions -- made headlines when heavy rain fell overnight and through the day, giving the city 52mm in 30 hours to 3pm with some locally heavier falls reported to the SES. Flooding from local creeks and the Wollondilly and Mulwaree Rivers, which meet at Goulburn, put the golf course and adjoining playing fields under water, closed about 12 local roads, threatened 20 properties in Eastgrove, and filled Sooley Dam, the smaller of the cities two water supplies. Local flooding also affected, but did not close, the Hume Highway at Marulan, 20km east. Canberra also recorded useful rain -- 49mm in the 48 hours to 9am Wednesday -- with the floodgates opened on Lake Burley Griffin's Scrivener Dam for the first time since 2002.

During the afternoon as the low approached Nowra, rain began to wrap around its southern flank and approached the area south of Canberra from the east. This pushed the moisture into the colder airmass moving in from the south and produced the day's most extraordinary event. A blizzard developed in the high country to the southeast of Michelago and snow spilt westward to close the Monaro Highway between Michelago and Bredbo soon after midday. A local indicated the highway was covered to a depth of 10cm near Michelago. Michelago settlement is about 690m elevation, and the highway rises to around 800m between there and Bredbo, but the mountains to the southeast rise to over 1300m and it was there that a 24-year-old woman on an isolated property on Calabash Fire Trail placed an emergency call at 6pm saying she was suffering an asthma attack, was snowed in and cold, and had been without power for 7 hours.

In an epic rescue, 29 emergency workers battled for 11 hours through snow described as "waist-deep" to get to her and take her to Canberra Hospital. The rescue effort involved 4 ambulance officers in two vehicles from Cooma and Canberra, 14 firefighters in 4 trucks to assist with clearing snow and fallen trees, and a bulldozer, a snow-clearing Caterpillar on its own truck from Perisher Valley and several 4WD vehicles and their respective drivers that joined the party as the going got tougher. The effort was co-ordinated from a distance by four senior officers from state, regional and sector levels, and a call-centre operator staying in contact with the woman. The party took about 4 hours to move 12km, chainsawing trees across the road and clearing deep snow. Snow continued to fall, and they had to fell some overhanging trees for clearance because of the depth of the snow on the road and the weight of the snow weighing down the branches. They were finally blocked 8km from the house at 10.10pm, so two ski-doos were brought from Perisher Valley in the back of another ambulance, along with two police officers, and the rescue was finally made at 3.55am. The woman was in Canberra Hospital at 5.37am in a stable condition.

The story, told in detail in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 June , is a great example of the extraordinary weather that can occur in a small local area, but can pass unnoticed unless an event such as this brings it to light. The small settlement of Rossi, 25km SE of Queanbeyan and only 40km NE of the Calabash incident, recorded 51mm of rain between 9am and 2pm as the same rainband moved past; had this fallen as snow it would have resulted in a snowdepth of around half a metre.

As the low moved down the coast, the wrap-around rainfall also moved south, and by mid evening was running into the cold air south of Cooma. The Monaro Highway was closed from Cooma through Nimmitabel to Brown Mountain, and snow fell steadily around Cooma.