PeteB

It's been raining here non stop for over 36 hours, there just doesn't seem to be an end to it. Pete

Continual rain here, low cloud, dark and dismal. Pete

This is actually quite interesting. Having read about Maunder and Dalton minimums I decided to do a little research into sunspot activity in previous recent winters. I was quite shocked to see that 1946/7 was actually a solar maximum with a sunspot count of over 130, also 1978/79 had a very high sunspot count around 110. BTW, just to confuse things 1962/3 had a count in the 20's. While its true that there has been an increase in solar activity and we are very close to a solar maximum the sunspot count is only in the mid 60's. There is almost certainly a link between what's going on on the sun and our weather but it may be that there's a delayed reaction of several years before it filters down to what we see on the ground. However I believe that even in the middle of both Maunder and Dalton minimums that there were quite a number of mild winters. Pete

Sure, 1981 is the only one I can think of in that time period. Since I've lived out here (51 years) I can only remember 5, or 6 winters with at least an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas day. Pete

To all those who feel like cutting their wrists I'll just remind you that the 2 most severe winters of the last 65 years started on the 26th of December(1962)and the 23rd of January(1947). In fact I've read that just a week before the 1947 big freeze the temperature was in the mid teens over much of the country. Plenty of time and model watching before we need to panic. Pete

Met Office have issued a cold weather warning for all of England next week. Wales and Scotland do not have warnings yet. Pete

Yeah, 90% of the snowfalls around here are like that. It does mean that it can lead to some monster snow events though . Pete

Indeed, I was 14 in 1963 and just loved all the snow. It was great fun walking on top of 15 foot snowdrifts and over frozen lakes and streams but by mid feb I was fed up with freezing to death every day at the school bus stop and constantly having to help my dad shovel snow off the drive. I just wanted to get back to playing football and doing normal things again. These days I have to think about how I'm going to heat my house and what sort of damage it's going to do to my plumbing, guttering, roof, etc. I still enjoy as much as anyone else a foot of snow on the ground but a month of it would be about the limit for me these days. Pete

Intense rainfall here, you can actually hear it from inside the house. Pete

Last Pea Souper smog I saw was when I was growing up in Birkenhead, must have been in the late 50's I guess. I don't remember any thick fog in December 1962 but by that time I was living at 350 feet where we never get fog. There must have been a fairly thick fog on Merseyside on Christmas eve though, I actually thought they'd had snow when we arrived for Christmas Dinner. If there's one aspect of the past weather that I don't miss then it's freezing smog, coughing out lumps of soot is no joke at all. Pete

Situation normal up North. Heavy rain showers every few minutes now, skies clearing between showers temperature down to 1.6. Pete

2 degrees here and pouring down with rain. Wouldn't be surprised to see The Clwydian range covered in snow by the morning. Pete

That's probably right but there's no real scientific explanation for how they actually start. In fact after reading several articles about this, Ice ages would seem to be impossible but yet they happen.. Pete

I saw a sparrow at our bird table 5 years ago but I haven't seen a starling here since the winter of 1981/82. Another common bird around here was The Thrush, last spotted one of those in 2010. The once common Treecreeper has vanished together with The Greenfinch. Most common birds here are, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Nuthatch, Dunnock, Chaffinch, Magpie, Crow, Jay, Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Goldcrest, Blackbird and Robin. Buzzards, Kestrels and Sparrow Hawks patrol the skies year round. Winter time brings Pheasants, Pied Wagtails, Garden Warblers, Long Tailed Tits, Wrens and the occasional Redwing. Mammals include Badgers (which only started coming into the garden this summer) and the Hedgehog. One of our cats confronted a Polecat a couple of years ago in a standoff that lasted a couple of minutes. Foxes are surprisingly rare around here must be 5 years since I've seen one. Pete

I've lived here for 34 years and for the first time we're getting Jackdaws and Willow Tits in the garden. We're also seeing a large increase in the numbers of Goldfinches and Bullfinches. Pete

IMHO, There has to be some sort of disruption to the Atlantic Conveyor Belt before an Ice Age can establish itself in the Northern hemisphere and probably some sort of chain reaction to the rest of the ocean currents world wide. If you look at the extent of the ice sheet during the last glacial period then there's no way that Ice several kilometres thick could have formed in for example The Irish Sea had the conveyor belt had been running normally. What we have to ask is what factors cause it to switch off, is it a natural cycle or is it linked to dimming of the Sun, volcanic activity or by The Earth passing through interstellar dust? Pete

4.0 for me. Pete

Yes, I remember this winter pretty well. I drove up from North Wales to visit my parents who were living in Aberdeen at the time on December 23rd 1978. The only snow I spotted was a light dusting on the tops in the Lake District but it was very cold with thick ice where the puddles had frozen solid. There was no snow where my Dad lived about 10 miles inland from Aberdeen but on Christmas day we drove into Tomintoul which had a good foot of snow on the ground. Coming home on the morning of the 27th we hit the first few flakes before we got to Dundee and from there on it was a nightmare with drifting snow on higher ground and wet snow elsewhere until we reached around Preston where the snow turned into rain. 20 hours it took us to get home . My parents friends who went up on the 28th never got past Carlisle. In fact they got stuck there for a couple of days before they were able to return south. By the 29th the snow had moved down into North Wales, tons of the stuff and temperatures plummeted. During the next few weeks we had several more periods of snow and in March 1979 one of the heaviest falls I've ever seen. It had mostly thawed when we got hit with another couple of inches in April. One of the snowiest and coldest winters I can remember around here only surpassed by 62/63 and possibly 81/82. Pete

Before my time I'm afraid. One thing to remember about 1947 though was that the vast majority of freight and passenger traffic was by rail, especially to more remote areas and most of those lines no longer exist. The priority then was to keep the railways moving and I've seen some spectacular video clips of locomotives fitted with enormous ploughs slamming into 20 foot drifts. Pete

1963 was an exceptionally cold winter. The temperature remained below freezing day and night for 30 days on the trot. Outside of the period from 23rd December to the 6th March it froze every night as I recall and on the days it didn't freeze the temperature never went higher than around 4 degrees. I have seen on a few occasions snow that has partially melted start blowing about when the temperature drops below freezing and the wind picks up. March 1965 and December 1981 spring to mind. In the 1965 event it was mainly blown from roofs and trees but in 1981 it came from the ground. I actually examined this phenonema at the time and the snow that was blowing resembled ice crystals. I also saw some photographs, I think they were taken in the flatlands of Lincolnshire in 1981 or 1982 where the wind had rolled wet snow into balls that were about 2 feet high. I'm not sure if any large towns were cut off in for any length of time in 1963 but back in those days we didn't have any snow blowers so lots of country lanes were just left alone. The lane I live in was closed from late January to early April until the snow melted. We now have 2 snow blowers and a fair few conventional ploughs but a lot more traffic. Interestingly, back in 1963 the council bought a couple of extremely large plough blades shaped into a "V" from Canada which were never used again as by 1981 the next time they needed them they had just rotted away. Pete

No, it was 1998. Here's a news report from the time. Pete

April 14th/15th 1998, we had a very unexpected fall of no less than 37cms. Pete

Plenty of snow here in 63, 15 foot drifts in places and total chaos on the roads. Several villages to the south of us were cut off for at least a week and helicopters had to be used to bring in supplies. I was too young to drive back then but I can remember that the dead straight road at Sealand RAF camp which is at sea level had 24/7 snow ploughing for a week as snow blew off the fields. There was still snow to be found here (I'm at 110m) in the first week of May. The worst thing I remember was the cold, you would wake up with half an inch of ice on the window and a frozen toothbrush. The drains from the upstairs bathroom which ran down the side of the house had to be defrosted every day, the guttering came off several times and my dad seemed to be fixing underground bursts every day. While things will have improved around the home I would expect that on the roads that it'd be much worse, the sheer volume of traffic would bring everything to a grinding halt. You may well have a 4WD but it won't be much use if you get stuck in a queue behind a road blockage. You can expect what they call in America "Price Gouging" to occur, there would be rises in food, fuel, heating oil and possibly in winter clothing too. With todays weather forecasts reaching most of the population I'd also expect panic buying of bottled gas, food, petrol, etc. I don't remember any major power cuts in 63 but I would think these are quite likely in a severe winter today. Pete

Not much rain here today and not that windy either. Considering the BBC had a great huge green blob passing over this area I expected a biblical downpour but we've had less than 5mm all day. Pete

This was the last true blizzard we've had at this location. Drifts reached about 24", if I remember correctly there was a mini ground blizzard a few days later that added a few more inches to the the drifts. The first 4 years I lived here(1961-65) there were 3 major blizzards, just 2 since then, the last of which is now over 30 years ago. Pete