Sydney Shivers

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 153, 1 July 1938, Page 3

Sydney Shivers

ALL CAPITALS AFFECTED SYDNEY, June 24. For several days this week the southern half of Australia was in the grip of unusually severe cold. This succeeded, in Sydney at least, several weeks of weather that, for late autumn and early winter, had been mild, and tho change compelled people of this city to adopt uncommon methods to become ■aud keep warm. j Sydney was the coldest of tho six capitals on Monday and Tuesday, the ■ Antarctic depression which caused the cold seemiDg to reach the depth of its intensity at this latitude. On Monday the temperature fell to the lowest point registered m June for two years. It was even colder e:i Tuesday morning, when the minimum temperature, 38.6 degrees, was the lowest for five years, and was only 2.9 degrees above the lowest registered for all time—on June 22, 1932. Leading city stores reported a sharp increase in sales of winter clothing. Hot water bottles were in demand; milk bars served hot drinks, and ice cream sales fell to zero. Electricity consumption showed a 10 per cent, increase over the figures for the corresponding days of last year. Hotels reported doubles sales of spirits, especially rum. From other capitals same similar reports of cold, although Sydney, in tho grip of winds from the southern Alps, suffered more severely than Melbourne, 500 miles nearer the Antarctic.

i In inland districts of New South | Wales the cold was even more intense than in Sydney. At Mount Kosciusko and Kiandra (Australia’s bleakest town) it was only natural that low temperatures prevailed, but it was rare for towns on the southern tablelands, lower than the Alps, to record such temperatures as 17 degrees, as Queanbeyan and Braidwood did on Tuesday.

It was even more rare to find Cobar, in the western division of the StatOj reporting a reading of 24 degrees.