Snow comes to Mount Sugarloaf

The weather forecast for Sunday, July 18, 1965, did not mention the possibility of snow falling a few kilometres from Newcastle Post Office.

Snowfalls in the Hunter region are usually confined to Barrington Tops and parts of the Upper Hunter.

On that Sunday morning snow not only fell on Mount Sugarloaf but also in some Newcastle and Lake Macquarie suburbs. By sunrise the slopes of Sugarloaf were covered with about 10cm of snow and more than 16cm lay on the hills around Maitland, Cessnock, Singleton, Muswellbrook, Denman, Scone, Aberdeen and Barrington Tops. Near Cessnock the snow also fell at Mount View, Millfield and Quorrobolong. Snow was also reported at New Lambton, Waratah and Windale.

As can be seen, on Mount Sugarloaf children built snowmen and had snow fights. As the news of the snowfall spread hundreds of sightseers made their way up the mountain. By mid-morning the police had to close the road to the summit because of the traffic.

With the snowfalls came strong wind and rain which was welcomed by the Hunter's farmers and graziers, who hoped it would herald the end of a drought that had lasted for 16 months.

Snow again fell on Mount Sugarloaf on Thursday, June 12, 1975.

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License