by Pete Taylor (snowatch.com.au)

Warm temps and rain have been a ball and chain around the ankle of Season 2016 in Australia, but things are about to change (once the heavy rain from this afternoon and tomorrow moves away from the mountains.

A light entrée on Tuesday with light showers mixed in with light snowfalls that could leave anywhere from 5-15cm in the NSW and Victorian resorts. That should set up a thing base cover and assist in ground cooling for the main course to come.

Thursday should see the clouds roll in once again with showers developing before a cold change arrives in the Victorian resorts overnight and moves up into the NSW resorts in the early hours of Friday morning. Snowfalls will become heavy and reach low levels well below 1000m later in the day. The mountains and surrounds will turn white, the higher areas will see blizzard conditions and the roads will become slippery, unsafe and a holiday traveller’s nightmare. Although that doesn’t sound too good to the normal person, to any skier, snowboarder or resort head honcho this is the stuff they dream about. From overnight Thursday to Sunday there should be anything from 30-60cm (and that’s on top of Tuesday’s snowfall).

Snow is likely to reach the outskirts of Canberra with a nice cover on the Brindabella’s by Saturday. Snow could possibly even reach as far as the Blue Mountains and areas like Orange in NSW.

With the snow falling to low levels it will see all slopes finally covered in fresh snow, and once compacted and groomed we should see the resorts opening more runs and getting the lifts spinning next weekend.

The Snowatch Long Range outlook beyond this is good with more snow likely across the 30th-1st of July. I’d expect another 10-20cm of fresh snow, which will be perfect timing just before the school holiday’s commence and hundred’s if not thousands of families head to the mountains.

So in summary that’s around 45-80cm across the next two weeks. Season 2016 is finally about to take off, albeit a little late.

Further ahead more snow is likely to fall around the 5th-7th and then the 12th-14th of July.

For daily snow forecast updates check out snowatch.com.au