An arctic blast has seen Ballarat shiver through a third successive weekend where the mercury failed to reach double figures.
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The cool front saw snow fall at Trentham on Sunday, while a change in conditions prompted the Bureau of Meteorology to issue a severe weather warning for much of the state.
Senior forecaster Terry Ryan said a strong cold front south of the Great Australian Bight entered western Victoria on Friday night, bringing strong gale force northwesterly winds.
“Ballarat did have some strong gusts, including up to 65km/h recorded at 9pm on Saturday night,” he said.
“The warning was definitely worthwhile.
“The change went through at about 1am Sunday morning and the winds became more westerly. That was around the same time the temperature started falling.”
The severe weather warning was canceled for Ballarat late Sunday afternoon.
Despite the strong winds it was a relatively quite weekend for local State Emergency Services volunteers.
The Ballarat unit responded to the first of its requests for assistance at 8.15pm on Saturday in the Mount Helen area, with a property receiving structural damage.
The second call out to the SES came on Sunday afternoon at 12.53pm after corrugated iron was blown from the roof of a property near the Mair Street-Humffray Street North intersection.
While Ballarat’s overnight low of 3.2 degrees wasn’t enough to bring snow, outlining areas did experience sub-zero temperatures which resulted in light falls.
“I spoke to someone at Trentham and there was snow there,” Mr Ryan said.
“We had snow anywhere above 600 metres on Saturday night. There are further showers about heading into Sunday night, so we could see more to come.
“Sometimes there is confusion between snow, sleet and hail. Sleet is snow and rain mixed, it is almost snow but not quite.”
Ballarat hasn’t experienced a weekend in the double figures since Sunday, July 5.
"Even during the afternoon on both days this weekend there was nothing really much above nine degrees and the chill factor definitely made it feel like it was much lower,” Mr Ryan said.
"There’s showers around, but there hasn’t been a lot of rain in the gauge.”
The Bureau of Meteorology recorded 6.8 millimetres in total for the weekend at its Ballarat Aerodrome base to 3pm on Sunday.
