Bathurst to struggle to just 15 degrees in mid-December

Fast forward six months (and all of spring) and Bathurst is about to hit ... well, 15 degrees.

Thursday's forecast maximum won't be the city's coldest December day - that dubious honour belongs to 11.4 degrees on December 1, 1934 - but it will be more than 10 degrees below the long-term average.

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It will also be pretty much the same temperature as the coldest December day for Bathurst in 2021: 15.5 degrees on the 10^th day of that month.

And the reason for the burst of cold?

Meteorologist Steph Spackman said a low pressure system moving across the country, which now sits off the coast of Tasmania, is similar to weather patterns we've seen throughout spring.

The system stretches a lot further south, closer to Antarctica, and when that happens, winds catapult cold air over the south-east of Australia.

"It's a spinning wheel. The wheel catches the cold air in the south and then pulls it up and sends it to Australia," she said.

"What we have is essentially a cold pool of air ... continuing to travel north. Some of those temps are quite cool; cold enough to possibly see snow in higher regions."

For the record, "higher regions" means above 1200/1300m in NSW.

The cold snap this week will keep Lithgow to a top of 14 degrees on Thursday and Orange to just 12 degrees.

Bathurst had a cold weather dress rehearsal on Monday afternoon when the official temperature was 16.4 degrees at 6pm but the feels-like temperature, as a freezing westerly blew, was just 6.7 degrees.

When Bathurst was 15.3 degrees on June 20:

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