Snow in Queensland, soft hail or snow in Sydney and icy delays in Adelaide. It has snowed in Queensland, and it will pay to rug up because even colder weather is expected tomorrow. Snow, sleet, wind and rain ripped through the state’s Granite Belt and southern Darling Downs, bringing freezing conditions yesterday. See photos here. The big chill was felt across virtually all over the eastern seaboard and the ski fields at Perisher in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains enjoyed a 15cm dump of snow.

Meanwhile, one of Adelaide’s coldest mornings forced the delay of flights yesterday as ice formed on the wings of planes. Adelaide Airport managing director Phil Baker said up to 400 passengers were due to leave about 7am but their flights were delayed until about 8.15am, when the air temperature increased. For Adelaide it was the coldest temperature since 1982.

Yesterday, Granite Belt Wine Country marketing director Michele Cozzi said snow was reported at Eukey, south of Stanthorpe, and at Sugarloaf Forest to the east while sleet was recorded at Stanthorpe, Glen Aplin and Applethorpe.

And the ground turned white in Sydney. It looked like snow, and it felt like snow, but in what may come as a disappointment to Sydneysiders, today’s winter whiteness was just soft hail. Just after 3.30pm (AEST) this afternoon the area around Lindfield, Roseville and Killara became blanketed in white as a thunderstorm brought a winter wonderland to parts of northern Sydney. It’s given a very European feel to Roseville,” one Roseville woman told the Seven Network. “I think the snow here is better than Perisher,” a man from the same suburb told the ABC. But despite some hope that metropolitan Sydney had experienced its first recorded snowfall since 1836, the Bureau of Meteorology said northern Sydney had just been blanketed in hail. “It was soft hail,” senior forecaster Peter Zmijewski said.

As an emailer said some of the places where snow fell were the equivalent of a snow in Buenos Aires as they experienced last year for the first time in many years. Speaking of South America, the UN had to rush aid to Peruvian farmers who are suffering from unusual cold and snow . a combination of unseasonable low temperatures, frosts, snow and hail that damages crops and the high-altitude pastures on which alpacas graze, according to Marc Vandersmissen, FAO’s Emergency Coordinator in Peru. This year, the cold arrived well ahead of the usual season - in March and April, instead of June - and many small-scale farmers have not been able to harvest their crops.