Thirteen people trapped in cars overnight and hikers rescued as heavy snow falls across Victorian and NSW alps
More than a dozen motorists and two hikers have been rescued after being trapped in heavy snow in the alpine region of Victoria amid a dangerous start to the snow season.
Separately, bushwalkers were evacuated near Mount Kosciuszko in New South Wales as snow fell across Australia.
Search crews rescued 13 travellers stranded near Mount Hotham as 50cm of snow fell around the Blue Rag Range Track near Dargo High Plains Road. Some spent Saturday night in their cars and one man in his 40s suffered minor injuries after his vehicle rolled.
Emergency services used snowmobiles to traverse the mountain. Members of Wangaratta Ski Club, the Country Fire Association and a snow plough from Mount Hotham Alpine Resort joined the rescue effort, said Graham Gales, an SES unit controller.
Gales said the roads had been challenging even for experienced volunteers, and it had been difficult to ascertain how many people remained stranded.
'We were very surprised at the number of vehicles that we did come across yesterday … that had gone out for the weekend and have been caught short by the snow,' he told ABC Radio.
'The experience of our drivers going into the Dargo High Plains Road yesterday was even they were having difficulty, and these are people that basically work in the snow all year round.'
Police and the SES said no one remained trapped in the area by Monday afternoon.
Roads had been closed across the Victorian alps, but the site of the incident was accessible to motorists over the weekend despite heavy snowfall being predicted.
The local Alpine Shire council on Friday recommended motorists avoid the road in a Facebook post before declaring the road closed on Sunday morning. However, some gates on Dargo High Plains Road wouldn't be locked until Thursday, the local mayor, Sarah Nicholas, said.
'In the alps, during the declared snow season, you have to carry chains … so people should have chains with them during this current [long] weekend,' she told ABC radio.
Police in 2024 turned back nearly 1,500 vehicles from the Mount Hotham area for failing to carry mandated wheel chains.
Two hikers were rescued from the Wonnangatta walking track in Vioctoria's Alpine national park on Monday, police said.
Sign up to Morning Mail
Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters
after newsletter promotion
Emergency crews separately rescued two bushwalkers stranded near NSW's Mount Kosciuszko on Sunday after the pair were stranded in blizzard conditions.
A search party advanced through fierce snow on Saturday towards the 31-year-old man and 28-year-old woman but was forced to retreat due to white-out conditions.
Trained alpine officers then reached them late on Saturday night and the pair was escorted from the Kosciuszko walking trail to a staging campsite and evacuated by 4am on Sunday.
Hotham Alpine Ski resort reported 12cm of snow in the 24 hours to 9am with 63cm in the week to Monday.
The Snowy Mountains were set to see additional dumps of 10cm to 20cm on Monday, with many areas already seeing half a metre of snow over the past few days.
More snowfall was forecast across alpine regions of Victoria and NSW on Monday with some sites expecting further falls in the coming days.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Parts of Australia are suffering another devastating drought, but you wouldn't know it in the cities
We got some rain in rural Victoria over the weekend, and that's headline-worthy news. There's been a record-breaking drought that's been afflicting the states of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales for over a year, but depending where you live – and how you get your news – you may not know much about it. This represents a problem Australia desperately needs to confront. ABC radio's Victorian Country Hour has been touring towns across the state, collecting stories from areas that were previously some of the richest farmland in Australia, recording the ongoing impacts – material, financial, social, psychological – on communities. The weekend's rain will help refill some dams, but the winter cold means it won't replenish pastures where it's needed for animal feed: an unprecedented 'fodder drought' continues. Australia is predisposed to droughts. Even so, the ABC has quoted the Colac-based Dairy Farmers Victoria president, Mark Billing, explaining: 'This is not a normal year.' He's right: in parts of southern Australia, rainfall data's shown totals at near-lowest or lowest levels since record-keeping began. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Australian farmers have adapted their agricultural methods and listened to science to prepare for unpredictable conditions, but no one was prepared for this. Now, 18 months after farmers began trucking water and hand-feeding their animals, stockpiled feed is running out. Shipping in more pressures the farmer to front the capital for its purchase – a burden that's pushed many to sell off animals and sell off land. The bush telegraph in rural communities like mine has been relaying stories of abattoirs so full with the unsustainable stock that some farmers are left with animals that will simply – pointlessly – have to die. No one needs me to tell them climate change is making droughts worse. But as a nation dependent on local agriculture to feed itself, what we need to work out is how a crisis with such dire implications is barely on the mental register of a city like Melbourne – with 5 million inhabitants and a mere two hours' drive from Colac – because despite the severity, despite state government emergency measures – it just isn't. Depending on which corners of the internet you hang out in, the drought gets scant mention even in the outrage towards federal environment minister Murray Watt's provisional approval of a 45-year life extension for Woodside's North West Shelf gas mega-project in Western Australia. My colleague Adam Morton and some others have made the obvious connection, and excoriated a project the Australia Institute calculates will generate 4.3bn tonnes of emissions 'with no proposal for abatement at all'. But others did not. Which provokes an equal and opposite question: why aren't climate-hit farmers bullrushing Watt's office themselves? A recent Peter Lewis piece reminds how recent rollouts of renewable energy 'ran the real risk of being sidelined by a lack of community social licence'. I can vouch 'Stop AusNet's towers' corflutes still hang in our town. As we try to get our heads around the reality of climate change, the largest obstacle to meaningful action appears to be the siloing of stakeholder communities. If droughts are invisible to city slickers, why should any farming community believe transmission lines are anything but an eyesore? When it comes to environmental policy, gaining 'social licence' is an omnidirectional struggle – not because rural communities are climate deniers or that climate activists are self-appointed moralisers or even that governments steamroll communities into policy decisions. An overwhelming majority of Australians believe in climate change, but evidence suggests communities are no longer holding different opinions so much as they are holding completely different conversations, and I suspect the pick-and-mix, choose-your-news nature of modern media may be contributing to a terrifying problem at the worst possible time. If there's no common framework, there can be no consensus commitments. Woodside's proposed North West Shelf expansion represents an unacceptable climate risk in an Australia where dairy farms are drying out already – and the Albanese government, which has pushed so hard on renewables infrastructure, batteries and EVs from its first term, obviously knows this. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion The unique 'tawny horror' experienced by the red-tinged-with-green Labor-voting environmentalist lies in being disgusted by the environmental consequence of a Labor decision while understanding precisely why it was made. Absolutely, Australia must reform its environmental protection laws to add climate considerations, but if we're to achieve imperative energy and sustainability transitions in the wake of Albanese's election win 'for stability against the chaos of Dutton', as Lewis writes, that will not come through unilateral, command-and-control antics. At the other end of the political spectrum, that's what Trump's doing. Going fast and breaking things results in a lot of broken things – a situation Australians find electorally unpalatable. The alternative obliged here is a nuanced, national conversation shared by the breadth of the electorate. When it comes to projects like the North West Shelf, there is a pressing need for the government to move on environmental protection reforms, but it can't do it without all communities contributing to a shared conversation about risks and trade-offs. At the same time mounting environmental risks are causing increasingly lethal chaos, everyone has to understand where tens of thousands of jobs will be lost, what energy transitions do to investment returns and tax revenue, as well as our energy security relationships with importers like Japan and South Korea. Complaints are not solutions. Plans are. Where and how that honest community conversation takes place is now the challenge. It demands a cultural humility the internet is unlikely to encourage. Overcoming the silos between rural experience, urban attention and the policy bunkers of government is hard, but it has to happen. We once valued the ABC as the instrument for this kind of national discussion, but as the broadcaster sheds shared forums like The Drum and Q+A, we're staring down the reality of environmental disaster understood as niche programming. If a devastating drought only a couple of hours away has become unimaginable, perhaps the faraway place called the future has already become impossible. Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Brutal polar blast hits Australia: How cold it will get in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and more
Australians will continue to shiver through icy temperatures for the rest of the week after heavy snow caused chaos in the alpine regions over the long weekend. All capital cities around Australia, except Darwin, are set to start the day below 10C for the rest of the working week. A cold front is forecast to bring below-average temperatures to large parts of Queensland with morning frost stretching from the outback to Brisbane 's west. But while those in the Sunshine State's capital will enjoy clear skies on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sydney and Melbourne are expected to see clouds and showers through the rest of the week. Dean Narramore, from the Bureau of Meteorology, predicted the wet weather would largely avoid the regions that need it most. 'We're continuing to see, as you'd expect, winter light conditions and cold across much of eastern and southeastern Australia,' he said. 'But the wet weather associated with the low that's been driving this won't be too common through southeastern parts. 'Just some isolated showers through parts of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. 'Well over in the west, we'll see a cold front move through southwestern parts of WA, and high pressure continues to dominate the rest of the country.' Rainfall in May was below average in southern WA, most of SA and Victoria, northern and western Tasmania, western NSW, areas surrounding Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria, and the Northern Territory. Some light rainfall is expected to bring some relief to the drought-stricken Eyre Peninsula from Thursday. Weatherzone meteorologist Anthony Sharwood said snow in alpine regions across NSW and Victoria fell 'in two waves' as a polar blast hit over the long weekend. 'A cold front that passed through southeastern Australia on Saturday delivered the first batch from the west, with a low pressure system then feeding more moisture onshore,' he said. The fall was good news for skiing fans with the system creating a solid base at several resorts. 'When the clouds clear and the freshly fallen snow compacts, expect a natural snow base of around 50cm on the higher slopes, with numerous lift openings imminent,' Mr Sharwood said. Two hikers, a 31-year-old man and 28-year-old woman, were trapped by the snow near Mt Kosciuszko on Saturday. 'Due to the weather, including low visibility, a helicopter was unable to reach the pair,' NSW Police said. 'Officers from the Alpine Operations Unit hiked into the location and reached the man and woman at about 10.40pm.' The pair were taken to a staging post campsite until they were finally extracted about 4am Sunday, both uninjured. Dozens of motorists had to be rescued across NSW and Victoria due to icy road conditions. The biggest operation was at Mount Hotham in Victoria's High Country after 19 people became trapped in their cars during a snow storm. Six people remained trapped in their vehicles on the Blue Rag Range Track near Dargo High Plains on Monday morning. They were pulled from their cars later that day. Authorities warned motorists not to underestimate the impact of snow and ice on the roads. Wintry temperatures in Sydney this week are set to be accompanied by grey skies and showers 'Please ensure your vehicle is roadworthy and well equipped with extra supplies should you become stranded in snowy conditions, as help can often be a long way away,' NSW Police said. 'Carry chains and fit them when directed. 'It is a good idea to practice fitting chains before entering the area as trying to fit them in blizzard conditions is not a good place to be learning this activity.' Snow could fall as low as 1,200m in Australia's southeast on Tuesday. Sydney Wednesday: Mostly sunny. Winds west to southwesterly 15 to 20 km/h becoming light in the late afternoon. Min 9. Max 18. Thursday: Mostly sunny morning. Medium chance of showers, most likely in the afternoon and evening. Light winds becoming west to southwesterly 15 to 20 km/h during the morning then tending south to southwesterly 15 to 25 km/h during the day. Min 8. Max 16. Friday: Partly cloudy. High chance of showers. Winds southwesterly 15 to 25 km/h. Min 9. Max 16. Melbourne Wednesday: Partly cloudy. The chance of morning fog. Slight chance of a shower, most likely in the late morning and afternoon. Light winds. Min 6. Max 14. Thursday: Partly cloudy. Areas of frost and the chance of fog about the nearby hills in the morning. Slight chance of a shower. Light winds. Min 5. Max 13. Friday: Partly cloudy. Areas of morning frost about the nearby hills. Slight chance of a shower. Light winds. Min 5. Max 13. Brisbane Wednesday: Sunny. Winds westerly 20 to 30 km/h becoming light in the evening. Min 9. Max 19. Thursday: Partly cloudy. Light winds becoming westerly 20 to 30 km/h during the morning then becoming light during the evening. Min 8. Max 20. Friday: Sunny. Light winds becoming westerly 15 to 25 km/h during the day then becoming light during the evening. Min 9. Max 20. Perth Wednesday: Partly cloudy. Slight chance of a shower in the morning. Light winds. Min 8. Max 18. Thursday: Partly cloudy. Light winds becoming north to northeasterly 15 to 20 km/h during the morning then becoming light during the day. Min 7. Max 19. Friday: Partly cloudy. High chance of showers, most likely in the morning and afternoon. Winds northerly 15 to 25 km/h shifting west to southwesterly 20 to 30 km/h during the morning then becoming light during the evening. Min 10. Max 21. Adelaide Wednesday: Partly cloudy. Medium chance of showers. Light winds becoming north to northwesterly 15 to 20 km/h in the morning then turning northeasterly in the late afternoon. Min 6. Max 16. Thursday: Partly cloudy. Medium chance of showers, most likely in the morning and afternoon. Light winds. Min 8. Max 16. Friday: Mostly sunny. Slight chance of a shower, most likely in the morning. Light winds. Min 6. Max 17. Hobart Wednesday: Cloudy. Medium chance of showers, most likely in the morning. Light winds. Min 7. Max 13. Thursday: Partly cloudy. Light winds. Min 4. Max 13. Friday: Mostly sunny. Patches of morning frost in the east. Slight chance of a shower. Light winds. Min 3. Max 14. Canberra Wednesday: Partly cloudy. Areas of frost and the chance of fog in the morning. Slight chance of a shower. Light winds becoming west to northwesterly 15 to 20 km/h in the early afternoon then becoming light in the late afternoon. Min -1. Max 13. Thursday: Partly cloudy. Areas of frost and the chance of fog in the morning. Slight chance of a shower. Light winds. Min -2. Max 12. Friday: Partly cloudy. Areas of morning frost. Slight chance of a shower. Light winds becoming southerly 15 to 20 km/h during the morning then becoming light during the afternoon. Min -1. Max 13. Darwin Wednesday: Sunny. Light winds becoming southeasterly 15 to 20 km/h in the morning then becoming light in the early afternoon. Min 19. Max 30. Thursday: Sunny. Light winds becoming southeasterly 15 to 25 km/h during the morning then becoming light during the afternoon. Min 19. Max 30. Friday: Sunny. Light winds becoming southeasterly 15 to 25 km/h during the morning then becoming light during the afternoon. Min 19. Max 30.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Couple trapped on Mount Kosciuszko rescued after bushwalk turns into nightmare
Two bushwalkers stranded in extreme freezing weather have been rescued following a dramatic operation in Kosciuszko National Park on Saturday night. Emergency services were alerted around 7.30am on Saturday after the pair reported being stranded on the Kosciuszko Walking Trail, below Mount Carruthers. A command post was quickly set up, and rescue teams were deployed. Rescue crews pushed to within 1.2km of the pair by 12.15pm but were forced to retreat due to white-out conditions and dangerously strong winds. About 10.40pm, trained alpine officers from both the NSW Police Force and the NSW State Emergency Service hiked on foot to the stranded hiker's location, while other operators established a forward staging area and campsite due to the conditions. About 12.25am on Sunda, the hikers were escorted to the staging post campsite, where they remained for a period of time due to rising Snowy River levels, strong winds and heavy snowfall. About 4.00am, the hikers were successfully extracted, with no injuries reported.
