The great snow melt of 2025 transforms the Snowy Mountains

As spring arrives, rivers in the Snowy Mountains surge with meltwater, revealing snow tunnels, waterfalls and hidden landscapes few ever see.

Transcript

00:00So, it's been a great snow season, but where does all that snow go in spring?

00:07Well, the great snowmelt of 2025 has begun.

00:13At the start of spring, there can still be a lot of snow around in the snowy mountains.

00:19For example, this year, the official depth as measured at Spencer's Creek on the 1st of September

00:27was almost 2.6 metres.

00:31So, just how much snowmelt do you get from, say, an Okubra full of snow?

00:39Is it a simple one-to-one conversion?

00:43No, far from it.

00:46According to my friends at the Bureau of Meteorology, it's more like one-tenth.

00:52On average, 2.6 metres of snow when it melts equates to about 260 millimetres of rain.

01:00But it's not an exact science, as factors like how densely the snow is packed

01:06can significantly affect these conversions.

01:12Regardless, it's still a lot of water that will run downstream into the mountain rivers.

01:19For example, much of the snowmelt here at Guthiga is stored, diverted and used for electricity production

01:29as part of the snowy hydro scheme.

01:32How much actually makes it down the snowy river all the way to the coast depends on several factors,

01:40including on just how much water is assigned as so-called environmental flows.

01:48But that's a story for another day.

01:50For now, let's enjoy the last few weeks of the 2025 ski season.

01:57So that's why I want to see the snowy river.

01:58I feel a bit older than then.

01:59I think there is a way to survive.

02:00At last few weeks of the year, there are many many temperatures,

02:01as in the past few weeks of the year, but the air is even cooler.

02:02That's why we can't breathe.

02:03And I feel like a little bit more than a day.

02:04And I feel like we have to survive in a month.

02:05I feel like we're over?

02:06I think we're going to have a number of these temperatures.

02:07I think we have to be a few temperatures.

02:09And I feel like we've got a couple of temperatures here,

02:11we have to get ourmal to start cutting the sand off.

02:12And we feel like, we're approaching it.

02:13And I feel like we're doing now.

02:14I know that we're doing too much bigger.