The Great April Snowstorm of 1919

[Weather-history]

The Great Snowstorm of April 1919 rarely gets mentioned as compared to the other past great April snow events. On the 26th of April 1919, an Arctic airflow plunged southwards over the UK which was followed by even colder air driving southwards as a low moved southwards down the North Sea on the 27th. A tremendous wet snowstorm developed as rain turned to snow inland as the preciptation became slow moving across the southeast of England. Depths of snow in the Home Counties to the north of London approached 40cm. As per usual, there was chaos in transport and telecommunications.

"Rainfall" totals for this event, on the coasts it was largely rain.

Rayleigh: 45.7mm

Chelmsford: 46.5mm

Colchester: 49.5mm

Great Bromley: 56.1mm

Felixstowe: 49.6mm

The snow rapidly melted when the snow stopped and there was flooding.

From the Times of 28th April of 1919 of this snowstorm

[Verglas]

27.—

Fierce blizzard, lasting seven or eight hours, accompanied by intense cold. swept over the Island.

[Weather-history]

Found some photos of this remarkable snowfall on this site.

http://www.oldreigate.com/?goto=gattonbottom

[kold weather]

Sounds like a more intense version of what we had, probably more intense simply because the low was far more advanced then the wave feature we had yesterday, certainly sounds impressive, the fact that the strength of the precip continued to change may be suggestive of several trough being embedded in that flow very close together probably giving the illusion of one long snowfall I reckon.

[Weather-history]

From the Times of 29th April 1919 and the impact of the storm

[Andy Bown]

Thank you Kevin, it's fascinating as always.

I'm amused that seaside towns were termed as 'health resorts'.

[Eugene]

What a fascinating thread this is, i've just found this forum.

Late snowfalls fascinate me, just something more special than in the wintertime when you expect it.

It's an amazing thing to see snow in April and May, the sun even now is as strong as early September so to get snowfall that even settles in late April to late May is just frankly amazing with the power of the sun.

Of course there is still alot of cold pooling around to our north much more so than in July/August, i wonder if there was a deep cold pool still to our north in July/August like there is in April/May would it be able to snow in the UK down to lower levels, the suns strength obviously doesn't prevent snowfall even to lower levels(scottish mountains can receive snowfall any month of the year).

Of course there was June 2nd 1975 when it snowed and disrupted that cricket match in derbyshire, i think the hills in the west/south midlands got some snowfall from that, June has seen wintry showers in the past few hundred years on many occasions.

Hail settling has been mistaken as snow in the summer.

Early snowfalls fascinate me too but they are rarer in September/October than they are in April/May due to much less cold pooling.

I would love to see a late April/May snow event in future years to add to this forum

With the amount of northerly blocking around i`ll be keeping a close eye on developments

Edited April 8, 2008 by Eugene