Region hit by big chill

SNOW didn’t quite hit Cranbourne last week but the icy cold wind and pouring rain certainly did.
Temperatures hovered at a chilly 7 degrees for much of the latter half of the week, forcing residents indoors and glued to the heater.
Many homes in the area had their gas cut on Wednesday night as the demand around the peak 7pm period exceeded the reserves of several gas companies.
Origin Energy spokesman Chandran Vigneswaran said Cranbourne was one of the worst affected suburbs, with the company taking about 300 calls on its emergency after hours number between 7 8pm.
“Some residents in Cranbourne experienced either a shortage of supply or in extreme cases no supply at all.
“The weather was extremely cold on Wednesday, one of the coldest days for quite some time, so there was a lot of demand.
“At 7pm we had a huge number of people using their gas and with the huge amount of demand the gas pressure drops,” he said.
However, much of the supply was back to normal by about 9pm, Mr Vigneswaran said.
“The shortage didn’t last very long.”
He said pockets of Narre Warren and Pakenham were also affected.