(Not having a go at your comment about the weather though- I spent the day sitting on the pier at Gellibrand and it was FAWKING COLD!)
That was obviously reported by someone who has no idea what black ice is, let alone how to drive on it.
It was a sh1tload of hail on the road in the dark.
That's not black ice. Black ice is areas of road surface that are slickly frozen, normally underneath overhanging trees or banks.
The road might be sunny, the day clear, but the water dripping off the tree/bank/whatever will freeze on the road because the road surface is below freezing temperature. It's very hard to pick because the road will just look damp, as if often does under trees/ banks, but in Australia, the road in an urban area will almost never be below freezing once the sun is up.
My guess is ambient temperature when these reports were coming through was about 6˚C - that's what we saw in Bulleen this morning, and the cars coming from the Camberwell area had HEAPS of hail on them.
black ice couldn't be sustained with an air temperature above 3˚C, which is why most European cars have an audible ice warning below 3˚C.
I love the Media!
Steve.
