Historical information

On Thursday the 19th of July, 1951, Melbourne faced the most snow it had seen in twenty years as the city recorded temperatures as low as 37.9 F (approximately 3 C) at 1pm - with Emerald likely facing colder conditions. Snow fell across Victoria, blanketing Emerald - and in this picture, John's Hill - in rare layers of snowfall. While there isn't data for Emerald itself, the Dandenongs had two inches of snowfall while Yea saw a foot a 3pm. It appears Emerald was between these two amounts, though it is difficult to tell from only this photograph.

The smudged annotations obscure where the photograph was taken from, although it was possibly Edenmont Road.

Significance

Snow of this magnitude is very rare in Emerald (as it is in most of Victoria) - an image of a very significant snowfall is important and one of only a few similar days in the past century.

Physical description

This black and white photograph looks over a snow-covered field to a hill, similarly blanketed with snow interrupted by the occasional fence or tree, rising into the cloudy sky. There are some markings and scratches in the surface of the photograph. Some of the pencil handwriting on the reverse is smudged, obscuring the name of the road the photograph was taken from.

Inscriptions & markings

"Snow / Johns Hill / from [illegible] Rd 1951"