Yesterday planes were grounded in Melbourne due to “frost bite”. Car windscreens had to be thawed and there was black ice on the roads. The southern city is on track for its coldest July in 20 years.

In Sydney, where winter is usually a blip on the radar between beach trips, people are wearing coats and scarves against the bitter chill. In the sunshine state, it snowed. In Darwin, it dropped below 18 degrees.

Grim times, indeed.

Australia is in the grip of a cold snap that’s almost as bad as a northern hemisphere spring. And we’re not dealing with it well at all. As conditions worsen, a war has broken out between our major newspapers over who coined the term “Antarctic vortex”.

Enough is enough. These painfully cold days — this unbearable run of frigid mornings — must end.

Crikey strongly condemns this Arctic weather, and calls on Jack Frost to go back to where he came from.

(With apologies to The New York Times.)