Wagga under ‘snow’ in June 1975. Photo: Maureen McPherson via Lost Wagga Wagga.
Yep. It’s cold. Really cold. Although perhaps not quite as cold as the day it snowed in Wagga almost 50 years ago.
The fabulous Lost Wagga Wagga page shared the above photo overnight, taking us back to the morning of 28 June, 1975.
The photographer is standing next to the Astor Hotel with the railway station behind them, looking back across the Edward Street intersection and down Baylis Street.
Ten days earlier, Wagga had huddled through its coldest day ever recorded, with the mercury dropping to -5.2 degrees Celsius on 18 June.
While the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) acknowledged that the temperature this morning (30 July) felt like -6.6C, it actually only dipped to -2.4C.
Snow in Wagga’s Newtown Gardens beside the lagoon in 1899. Photo: Museum of the Riverina (Brunskill Album).
While uncommon, it does occasionally snow in Wagga Wagga, with the first instance recorded and photographed in August 1899, when more than three inches (76 mm) fell on the city.
Two photographs in the Museum of the Riverina collections show snow on the Newtown Gardens (Victory Memorial Gardens) and the old Wollundry Bridge.
The Wagga Wagga Advertiser records how the whole town rugged up and made the most of the rare occurrence, building snowmen and pelting each other with snowballs that included an unhealthy amount of dirt and gravel!
“In Fitzmaurice-street no one was safe from attack, but the crowd was on the whole good humoured, and took its pelting individually with what grace it could,” the story reads.
“The employees at one large factory took up a stand outside the building for a considerable time and mercilessly fusiladed all who passed, to the neglect it is to be feared of all work—but the amount of the labour done on Tuesday morning anywhere must have been small, as everyone was making the most of the novelty.”
Snow on the Wollundry Bridge in 1899. Photo: Museum of the Riverina.
An article in the Wagga Wagga Express two years later, in July 1901, described the second snowfall.
“The day had been bleak and unpleasant and as 10 p.m. approached the snow commenced to fall, lightly at first, but increasing in intensity. The fall continued for upwards of an hour, and by 11 p.m. the ground was covered with a mantle of white,” it said.
“The attraction was irresistible—and snowballing was freely indulged in. The fun was kept up fast and furious for a considerable time, especially at the intersection of Fitzmaurice and Gurwood streets, to the great enjoyment of the participants and the victims.”
A small scattering of snow was recorded again in Wagga in 1929 and again in 1930 when it was enough to cause an accident outside the post office when a woman in a sedan ran over a cyclist.
In 1948, heavy snow was reported around 35 miles (56 km) outside Wagga in the Murraguldrie Pine Forest and there was a light fall in 1966 but the city does not seem to have attracted any more significant snow on the streets until perhaps the frozen moment above in 1975.
Is it snow or soft winter hail, also called sago snow?
Do you remember snow in the Riverina?
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