May brings first cold snap as max temperature drops five degrees in two days

Showers are predicted for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday this week, with the temperature dropping to a low of 13 degrees on Friday.

Morgan Pumpa, Bureau of Meteorology engagement officer, said a cold front in the west of NSW was moving east.

Ms Pumpa said that was bringing some unsettling conditions to the region, including Canberra.

"The main thing that people will feel is definitely the temperature change," she said.

"This is the first significant cold snap of the year."

Ms Pumpa said frost was a possibility later in the week, as top temperatures dropped five degrees in just two days.

"Overnight temperatures could get as low as zero degrees and one degrees later in the week and into the weekend," she said.

The Bureau was also predicting the chance of snow in the Alpine region from Thursday night and into Friday morning.

The cold front follows a month of relatively warm nights, with the mean minimum temperature nearly two degrees above average.

Canberra Airport recorded its warmest morning for the month on April 10, when the minimum temperature was a balmy 14.3 degrees Celsius.

The airport weather station recorded double the average monthly rainfall in April, 81.4 millimetres, its wettest since 2015.

April was wetter than average across the ACT, with all sites recording around double their average April total rainfall.

Moist onshore flow combined with upper atmospheric support brought 20 to 30 mm of rain in 48 hours on April 7 and 8, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

"The highest daily totals during the month, 25 to 30 mm, were recorded to 9am on the 20th from the passage of a cold front fed by moist tropical air," the Bureau reported.

"At the end of the month, a low-pressure trough fed by tropical moisture brought 20 to 30 mm of rain over three days, with the highest daily totals reported to 9am on the 30th."

Cloudy and wet April conditions meant maximum temperatures around one-degrees Celsius below the recent decade average, with only one relatively warm spell in the middle of the month.

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The cloudy conditions also meant few cold nights, with temperatures recorded at the airport remaining above three degrees this year until the end of April, only the third time this has happened after 1989 and 2007.

April nights were relatively warm across the ACT, with monthly mean temperatures one to two degrees above recent decade averages.

The Canberra Airport mean minimum temperature for April was 8.5 degrees, the warmest since 2018 and the eighth-warmest over all years since 1939, according to the Bureau.

Canberra Airport's mean daily minimum temperature was 8.5 degrees, which is 1.7 degrees above the average at the current site of 6.8 degrees.

The warmest day was 24 degrees, recorded on the April 11, and the coolest day was 13.6 degrees, recorded on April 2.

The coldest morning was 3.1 degrees on April 22, and the warmest morning was 14.3 on April 10.

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