Lawns were frozen across the NSW town of Batlow on Thursday morning. Source: Wayne Dubois

Australia is about to experience its shortest day of the year, and freezing temperatures are producing icy conditions around most parts of the country. At the base of the Great Dividing Range in NSW, it plummeted to below zero on Thursday morning, and some locals reported being unable to flush their toilets or wash their hands because the water pipes had frozen.

Wayne Dubois from Mountain Mowing Services said it was the biggest frost the town of Batlow has seen this year. When he walked across his lawn, he could hear a “crunch, crunch” under his feet, and he had to stomp on the ground to get the ice off before walking inside.

“I was supposed to be mowing this morning, and it’s only just thawing out enough now so I can work. That explains how frigging cold it is,” the eager tradie told Yahoo News at 1.30pm.

At -7.7 degrees, the coldest recorded temperature this morning was picked up at Marrangaroo in the Central West of NSW. But Australia’s Top End is another world away, and in Noonamah it’s already hit 31 degrees today.

The grass remained icy in Batow until after midday. Source: Wayne Dubois

Where will the coldest place be on the winter solstice?

This year, the winter solstice will fall on Saturday, and Australians will experience the shortest day and longest night of the year. The actual solstice itself will occur between noon and 1pm EST, marking the point when the Southern Hemisphere reaches its furthest tilt away from the Sun.

According to WeatherZone, the coldest place in Australia at that time will likely be in the NSW Alps, the Cooma region, or the ranges of Central Victoria. But it’s also expected to be chilly around the Albany region of southwest Western Australia. It’s hard to know what the coldest temperature will be at that time, but it’s likely to be between 5 and 10 degrees.

On the winter solstice, Australia will experience its shortest days of the year. Source: Westerzone

In the days leading up to the solstice, NSW alpine regions like Perisher and Charlotte Park are expected to be coldest with temperatures expected to plunge to -5 degrees.

“We could see somewhere nudging -10 possibly in that region,” Weatherzone meteorologist Jess Miskelly told Yahoo News.

On the night after the solstice, the most stable dry air with the least amount of cloud will likely be somewhere in southeast NSW.

Yesterday morning, the coldest place in the country was Glen Innes, just 100km south of the Queensland border, where the temperature fell to -6.7 degrees. But that’s not surprising to meteorologists.

“The places in Australia that tend to get the coldest mornings are in the Tablelands of NSW. It's more common to see the colder temperatures about the Central Tablelands around Orange or the Southern Tablelands around Canberra or Cooma. But if the dry air is in the right place, then it's not unusual for it to be further north,” Miskelly said.

This article originally appeared on Yahoo News Australia at https://au.news.yahoo.com/tradies-unable-to-work-and-pipes-freeze-in-icy-aussie-town-frigging-cold-063538345.html