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Even in Australia's warmest winter on record, you'd expect the coldest night to have occurred in the alpine regions of New South Wales or Victoria, or perhaps somewhere in Tasmania.
Guess again.
Locals of this town shivered through a bone-chilling night of minus 10.8 degrees on July 20, yet the town is located much closer to Queensland than Mt Kosciuszko.
READ MORE: Warmest winter on record across Australia
Give up?
The coldest spot in Australia this winter was Glen Innes in northern New South Wales, just 111km south of the Queensland border.
"We're pretty resilient up here," Josh Tibbs, bar manager at the Club Hotel in Glenn Innes told 9news.com.au.
"We're used to it, although that doesn't mean we like it."
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At an elevation of 1062 metres on the NSW Northern Tablelands, Glen Innes sits high enough to expect cold temps in winter, and even sees occasional snowfalls.
As you can see in the picture above, Glen Innes also sits in a shallow valley, which means cold air pools there in windless conditions, causing severe frosts on clear winter nights.
Glen Innes has registered some extreme low temperatures in the past – its average minimum in the coldest month of July is -1 degrees, while the lowest temperature ever recorded was a mind-numbing -12.8 degrees.
But it's not often that the town of just over 6000 residents will register a lower temperature than anywhere else in Australia over the duration of an entire winter.
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For example, in both 2022 and 2021, Perisher Valley in the NSW Snowy Mountains had Australia's coldest winter temperature, while in 2020 it was the tiny town of Liawenee in Tasmania, with a brutal minus 14.2 degrees.
But this year, with warm winter weather across much of Australia, and especially in the alpine regions down south, Glen Innes just happened to be the coldest spot.
Tibbs remembers the chilly night of July 20 and says the Cub Hotel had all four fires roaring, as it does most winter evenings.
He also says that the 2023 winter felt pretty warm overall, apart from the odd super chilly night or two.
He's right – Glen Innes' daytime temperatures were significantly above average in all three winter months in 2023.
The mercury even reached a relatively mild 14.6 degrees the afternoon after the frigid -10.8-degree night – 1.3 degrees above the average July maximum.
