00:01It was the warmest winter on record for much of South East Australia.
00:05This map shows the temperature deciles this winter compared to all previous winters since
00:101910.
00:11And you can see temperatures were the highest on record through much of New South Wales,
00:14Victoria and Tasmania, including the entire Alpine region.
00:19Now the longest standing weather station across the Alps is Cabramurra, which is in the New
00:23South Wales Snowy Mountains.
00:25They had a mean temperature of four degrees this winter.
00:28That's about two degrees above their long term average, but it's about three degrees above
00:32pre-industrial levels.
00:34But this winter was not only very mild, it was also quite wet across the Alps.
00:39You can see by the light blue shading, precipitation was above average in North East Victoria and
00:44around the New South Wales Snowy Mountains.
00:46But because temperatures were so consistently above freezing, most of that precipitation fell
00:51as rain this winter rather than snow.
00:53Now that's Perisher back on the 25th of August.
00:56That's about peak season when snow depth on average would be at its greatest level.
01:01But you can see there was almost no natural snow.
01:03And the Perisher Creek was looking much more like a river.
01:06But was a very challenging winter for our ski resorts from the start to the finish.
01:11Now we're still a month away from the traditional end of the season.
01:14But that photo today from Garthagar, which is part of Perisher, shows there's almost no natural
01:20snow left over.
01:21There's only a few patches of man-made snow across most of the resorts, apart from on the
01:25very highest peaks.
01:27This graph shows the annual peak snow depth at a couple of alpine locations.
01:32Let's start with Deep Creek.
01:33Now they recorded a maximum snow depth this winter of only eight centimeters.
01:38Their average is over one meter, and that is the lowest on record.
01:43Now this graph goes back to the 1990s, but we actually have data for Deep Creek, which
01:47is taken by Snowy Hydro.
01:49It goes all the way back to the 1950s, and it is still the lowest on record.
01:52Mount Buller, they had a peak snow depth, natural, 38 centimeters this winter, which made
01:57it the lowest in 20 years since 2006.
02:00And for our major resorts, Shredbo, Perisher, Mount Hotham, Falls Creek, that was also the
02:05stat.
02:06It was the lowest natural snow depth in 20 years.
02:08What's concerning, though, is the decline, the trend.
02:12You'll notice there it is definitely dropping, and the data shows we've seen between a 10 and
02:1740 percent loss of snow over the past few decades.
02:20And the projections are, in a warming climate, the Australian Alpine region will continue to rapidly
02:25lose snowfall over the next few decades.
