Snow in Armidale
02/08/25
Yes, you read that right, snow, in Armidale. While not entirely unheard of, this turned out to be the heaviest snowfall in the area since 1984, so I think it’s a pretty big deal personally. Having spent the better part of five years living in Canada, I’m no stranger to snow, but there’s something about seeing it not only fall but actually settle in Australia that feels somewhat… wrong. Un-Australian, even? On top of the snow, there was also flooding at the time, so it really was absolute chaos.
Things started out nice and slow, initially, I didn’t think anything would even end up settling on the ground, like the whole prediction was some kind of prank. The dogs certainly didn’t know what to make of it.
Once the snow had firmly started to settle, I knew it was time to grab my cameras and make my way out into the streets to document what was going on, maybe even capture some street photography if I could (and oh boy, did I ever). Given the wet nature of snow, picking my cameras carefully was important. I ended up going with the Canon 90D and the 70–300mm as my main setup, since it’s weather-sealed, as well as my Canon 200D with the 24mm prime for some sneaky wide shots where I could. It’s really hard to put into words just how surreal it felt stepping out of my house into snow-covered streets.
Once in town, I met up with my partner in crime, Evelyn from Peacock Photography, to snap as many street photos as we could. With snow being so uncommon up here, we knew we’d be able to get tons of great reaction shots from adults and kids alike.
It was also an opportunity to capture the downtown buildings in a way I’ll probably never get the chance to again. It was nice photographing them against something other than moody clouds for a change, which is usually my go-to.
Sadly…
Evelyn was ironically feeling a little under the weather, so she didn’t hang around long, but she got some awesome shots of her own that you can check out on her socials.
Once I felt like I had captured all I could in the CBD, I decided to make my way down to the creeklands and the park, and I think that’s where it really hit me just how crazy things were getting. Not only was the snow absolutely dumping down, but on top of that, the creek had swollen to levels I hadn’t seen since moving to the area, and according to many others I spoke to, levels they had never seen before either. It didn’t stop people from playing around the park, but it was certainly surreal seeing these crazy river heights alongside all of this cold, white stuff.
This is also where my friend Kathryn came into the picture.
She had driven down (bravely) and suggested heading to the lookout, a trip that would prove to be a harder drive than either of us expected. The lookout seemed to make sense as a destination to really see what the snow was doing to the town, after all.
Unfortunately, within minutes of arriving at the lookout, things went into a full whiteout, and we really couldn’t see much of anything. There was a decent-sized crowd of people up there who had the same idea, but I don’t think any of us expected it to start coming down as heavily as it did at that moment. It didn’t make for very interesting photos, sadly.
We decided to do one more stop as the roads were getting quite unsafe, so we settled on the NECOM building, or the old Teachers’ College, as most people like to call it.
As a location, it made sense in theory, but in the end, it didn’t really make for interesting photos eithe, and that’s okay. It was about being in the moment and experiencing something I didn’t think I’d ever get to experience again after leaving Canada: full-on, proper snowfall. With it being 40 years between snowfalls of this scale, I should be about 80 years old if it happens again. Here’s hoping I don’t have to wait that long, and that next time I also manage to get some better pictures. Because while I do love a lot of the street photos I got, looking back at these images now, it really does feel like I still missed so much...
