cheeky_monkey

to be honest february 1991 was the last decent snow event i have seen in terms of depth and length of time it stayed around...so its nearly 15years and counting. still feb 1978 was on another level altogther though!!

chelmsford is the county town of essex it is between colchester and london, about 15 miles morth west of basildon.

dont you mean january 1982? dont remember any in jan 1981. dec 1981 and the first 3weeks of jan 1982 were very cold and snowy.

i lived in chelmsford for 13 yrs..weatherwise its a great place to be when a winter easterly kicks in 1986,87 and 91 were paricularly good.. i remember playing football for the college in a game in feb 1991 that was abandoned after 30 mins there were blizzrd like conditions the snow was fine and powerdary..trouble was the ground was frozen solid and dangerous..anyway driving back on the minibus the radio gave the temp for colchester as being -6c god knows what the windchill was on the pitch that day!!...it is the only time i have worn gloves and leggings under my kit! as did both teams that day.

i was 11 yrs old at the time and living in exeter. what i remember of feb 1978 was that it was very cold in the first cpl weeks with snow showers, then on the 15th the weather changed and i went to school that mrning in heavy rain..it rained all day until about 4.30 when it slowly began to turn to sleet, by 6 it was snowing heavily. the next day the 16th was my brothers brithday and we woke to find a deep covering of snow and clear blue skies. it snowed again that afternoon and again the next day. on the sat the weather forcasters were predicting severe weather and blizzards and sure enough by lunctime the snow had started the winds picked up ..id never seen horizontal snow before. needless to say by the next morning my dads car was completly buried in the driveway and our bird table in our backgarden which was at least 6ft tall was lost under a drift against next doors fence. what i didnt realise at the time was that i was witnessing something special..a blizzard/snowfall that has never been matched since in my experience even though i have lived most of my life since 1982 in essex and seen the snows of the mid 80s, jan 87 and feb 91 but none of those have come close to that week in feb 1978.

can u please post a link to a site that has the met office defintion of a severe winter of a cet below 3c at the moment i am having trouble located one?

i dont agree about the definition of a severe winter...simply because the defintion of a severe winter month is one with a cet of below 2c..therefore by your thinking you could have severe winter winter with no severe months in it!

i think the way you have classified those winters are misleading. should be: 6c and over = very mild 5c-6c = mild 4-5c = average 3-4c = rather cold 2-3c = cold below 2c = severe plus the average for 1971-2000 which i assuming you are using would certainly not been average pre 20th century and would have been classed as mild..IMO.

exeter 1.15pm temp 15.5c full cloud cover very heavy rain no wind

january 1990.. i was literally blown over walking back from college! also the devastation of october 1987.. both this and 1990 i was living in essex...althought in 1987 the storm happened overnight (and i slept throught it)..the amount of damage the next morning was amazing to see!

exeter - 2pm dry clear blue skies sunny no wind temp 29c

exeter 10pm dry clear skies no wind temp 26c temp top out at 30.2c similar day forcast tomorrow maybe a degree higher we will see.

exeter 11.30 am dry clear skies strong sunshine no wind temp 28c

thats not entirely correct..it was the autumn rains that stopped the german drive on moscow...the fact that the germans hadnt been equipped with winter clothing was more to do with negelgence and the expectency of a german victory before winter, this was more telling than the actual weather conditions ( although extemely cold). The germans did not withdraw from russia on 31st jan 1943 (where that came from i have no idea?) their eventual retreat had nothing to do with weather conditions, but the ever growing strength of the red army. what is interesting is that a switch in weather conditions at the end of jan 1945 probably prolonged the war in europe by 3 months, jan had been very cold in europe then literally overnight 31/1st feb 1945 there was a massive thaw which stalled the russian attack on berlin at a piont when the red army was only 50km from the city and poised to strike.

wot about the kamikaze "divine wind" that destroyed the mongol invasion fleet of japan in 1281..a typhoon struct the invading fleet of kulbai khan and saved japan from destruction by the mongols.

exeter 7pm thunder and lightning very dark torrential downpours as well wind light to moderate breeze temp 20c

Exeter 4pm rain and thunder now occuring nothing on the scale of last week tho.

exeter 1.50 pm temp 25.5c short sharp shower wind has dropped to light breeze.

exeter 10 am temp 22.5c dry with hazy sunshine fresh breeze cloud building frm south and west

exeter 10.15 pm clear skies 22c calm humid

exeter 3pm temp 24c calm winds bright sunshine and clear blue skies.

it reached 29c here in exeter now at 22.45 currently 22.6c wind beginning to freshen up

hi exeter 11.30 temp 25c high cloud increasing from south making sunshine hazy wind calm

i was born in 1966. so i was a child of the 70s a teen in the eighties and an adult from 90s onwards. i spent the 70s in exeter and didnt think it eva snowed in the winter apart from odd showers until we got snowed in big style in feb 1978. Then got some very hefty frequents snowfalls in 1978-79 winter which was magic for a 12yr old. it happened again in 1981-82 with some great snowfalls again. Then frustration set in as during the mid 80s we missed out on a lot of snowfall that hit the country in exeter was just very cold and mainly dry. i moved to essex in late 86 so was lucky to experience the snows of jan 87 and feb 1991. There the story ends i havnt seen a decent snowfall since. But there is light at the end of the tunnel cuz im emigrating to canada in september!