Australian towns blanketed with rare snow in wild weather

Several towns in eastern Australia were blanketed with their thickest layer of snow in decades as wild weather swept the area this weekend, causing floods, stranding vehicles and cutting power to thousands of homes, authorities said.

A cold air front dropped as much as 40 cm (16 inches) of snow on parts of northern New South Wales on Saturday, the most since the mid-1980s, said Miriam Bradbury, a meteorologist at Australia's weather bureau.

Snow also settled in areas of the neighbouring state of Queensland for the first time in 10 years, she said.

Bradbury said climate change has made Australia's weather more volatile in recent years but that this sort of event had occurred several times in the historical record.

"What makes this event unusual is how much snow we had but also how widespread, covering quite a large part of the northern tablelands," she said.

With heavy rain lashing other areas, the New South Wales State Emergency Service said it had responded to more than 1,455 incidents. It said more than 100 vehicles had been stranded by snow, storms had damaged buildings and it had issued several major flood warnings.

Tens of thousands of homes spent the night without power, state broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.

Police in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, said a car had become stuck in floodwater on Saturday evening and a female passenger in her 20s was swept away. The search was continuing on Sunday, they said.