Cold blast brings snow, wind, rain

(AAP) A cold blast has brought an early dumping of snow to the Alpine areas with Victoria buffeted by strong winds and rain.

Up to 20cm of snow fell in the state's high country, while NSW had its earliest
snowfalls in more than a decade.
While the wintry weather sparked hopes of a bumper ski season, parts of Victoria
were counting the cost of a wild weekend.
The State Emergency Service (SES) responded to more than 500 calls for help from
midnight on Sunday as trees and powerlines came crashing down.
Melbourne's bayside areas were the worst hit, with 433 of the 557 calls coming from
the metropolitan area, including 172 in Frankston.
SES spokesman Allan Briggs said most of the calls were for fallen trees and power
lines, which crashed onto houses and cars and blocked roads and driveways.
At Wilsons' Promontory, in Victoria's far southeast, the wind reached hurricane
force with gusts of 129km/h, weather bureau forecaster Stuart Coombs said.
The area also received the state's highest rainfall, with 26mm falling after 9am
(AEST).
Melburnians shivered through the coldest day since August last year, with a top of
just 13.6 degrees at 11.30am (AEST).
The cold blast plunged the mercury below zero in the alpine areas, with temperatures
of minus three and minus four at some resorts.
With six weeks still to go before the ski season starts on June 6, the Queen's
Birthday holiday weekend, as much as 20cm of snow fell at Mount Hotham and Falls
Creek.
Other ski fields including Mount Buller, Mt Baw Baw and Lake Mountain recorded 10cm,
with more snow expected.
"It's always great to see early snowfalls. It gets people very excited about what
lies ahead," Maureen Gearon, of the Victorian Snow Reporting Service (VSRS), told
AAP.
At Lake Mountain Resort, which suffered significant damage in the Black Saturday
bushfires, resort managers are hopeful of reopening in time for the ski season.
In NSW, up to 20cm of snow fell in the Snowy Mountains, the earliest fall since 1996.
Perisher had five centimetres of fresh snow, while 20cm fell at Charlotte Pass since
11pm Saturday.
Bureau of Meteorology severe weather forecaster Michael Logan said snowfalls would
continue for the next 24 to 36 hours.
Meanwhile, South Australia's SES enjoyed a quieter end to the weekend after a wild
24 hours of damage from flooding and fallen trees across the state.
The SES was inundated by up to 250 calls for help, mostly in metropolitan Adelaide
and the Adelaide Hills.
As many as 9,000 homes lost power as trees crashed down on powerlines, but most
customers were reconnected by Sunday morning.