Melbourne drivers copped a fog alert and Canberra spent about six hours below zero on Thursday morning, as the high pressure system that has kept the southeast clear, calm and cold all week produced another round of frost and fog. The Bureau of Meteorology's forecasts say the pattern breaks this weekend.
The Bureau issued a road weather alert for Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs at 10:20am, warning that reduced visibility in fog would make road conditions dangerous. Melbourne Airport recorded 1.0 degree at 7am with humidity near 98 per cent, and the Olympic Park gauge bottomed out at 3.7 degrees. A similar alert for Canberra was cancelled mid-morning as conditions eased; Canberra Airport fell to minus 1.9 degrees at 6am and sat below zero from about 2am until 8am.
This is the tail of the system that has owned the week. The blocking high near Tasmania, the same one behind the record-high air pressure readings reported across the southeast on Monday, has held skies clear and winds light night after night. Weatherzone logged Melbourne's coldest night of 2026 on Monday, part of a stretch in which five states dropped below zero.
The high's last act is playing out offshore. Combined with a complex low pressure system near New Zealand, it is driving strong to gale-force southerly winds at Norfolk Island, where the Bureau issued a damaging surf warning at 11:36am local time. "Large and powerful waves are expected to intensify later during this afternoon," the warning said. Flood warnings from the record rain of early July are still winding down too, with a minor warning current on the Kiewa River, final warnings on Victoria's Ovens and King rivers, and the Bogan and Paroo carrying final and minor warnings in NSW.
The change arrives Saturday. The Bureau's Thursday-morning forecasts bring showers into Victoria's central district on Saturday afternoon on northerly winds of 25 to 35 km/h, then snow above 1,000 metres on Sunday. Canberra is forecast to reach minus 1 on Saturday morning before showers move through Sunday, with a 90 per cent chance of rain. Weatherzone expects 10 to 15 centimetres of snow at the mid-levels of most ski resorts across the weekend, and possibly more than 20 centimetres in Tasmania's Central Highlands.
One more frosty, patchily foggy morning is due Friday, on the Bureau's forecast issued at 9:56am Thursday. After that, the system that set the week's records finally moves on, and the next Bureau bulletins to watch are Saturday morning's, when the rain-bearing front crosses the state.
